1952 Mickey Mantle just sold for a $5.2 million
emar
Posts: 697 ✭✭✭✭
If there is any doubt vintage will be strong this year....
https://sports.yahoo.com/this-1952-mickey-mantle-rookie-card-just-sold-for-a-52-m-an-alltime-record-for-trading-cards-130140720.html
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When I read the article I was expecting it to be a PSA 10 😳
dang, dudes wearing fedoras have infiltrated the market now.
article says it was brokered by PWCC, was it an auction or did they just help broker it? ESPN article says it's the card Evan Mathis sold in 2018, anyone know if that's true?
Anyone seen Sammy Sosa lately? 😂
Which color?
ETA: Strawberry was always my favorite ...
just brokered? 😉
I'd suspect with the return of a full MLB season this year (which was largely absent for most of 2020) with the addition of several new states legalizing sports gambling this sort of story will be the exception, not the rule.
I'd suspect the big gains of 2020 will not be duplicated this year. The Mantle is clearly an aberration due to its iconic status and extremely low pop count.
Who knows? I may be wrong. The people betting on sports cards now are not collectors - they're speculators; investors. They aren't rational.
This sounds like the coin "investing" bubble of the late 1980's.
didn't the last consignor of this card end up breaking even or even losing a little on the 2.8 mil sale? the next seller then banks 2mil a few months down the road?
This is awesome.
I just watched a live interview with the buyer on IG and he was a very likeable guy and wildly successful. I read comments on another forum making fun of his clothes and I am always blown away at how many haters there are in the card hobby. Any dude making fun of this guy and the joke is on them.
The take away from his interview is that there are young whales like this entering the hobby that are really enjoying themselves. He mentioned he has an 8 and a 4 too.
I don't own that many cards that have mass appeal but I would say that if you do and they are apex items be careful selling them. There are guys like this licking their chops to buy them.
This is great news for the hobby and you are going to continue to see eye popping sales.
i would strongly disagree with you. realized prices would back me up.
I thought the same thing.
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PSA 10 is easily 15 million probably more like 20.
The Wagner I have read estimates as high as 35 million.
These mega cards are much higher than most realize.
I read that also on Blowout. A lot of haters on that side for sure. Everyone just nitpicks at every single thing. Making fun of how the guy dresses. A t-shirt with his name brand, jeans and a little trendy hat but so what. He's obviously killing it. My guess is that a lot of the folks on that side probably haven't been to a National. Tacky outfits everywhere. Massive cargo shorts convention too.
When I see sales like that, they certainly excite me. Especially since I own a Mantle myself
Now all ESPN needs to do is make a Mantle docuseries and we'll really see the baseball card market reach crazy territory as far as sales. I feel vintage is due for a bump since the last significant one we saw was back in 2016.
Dam i wish i had 5.3 million.
I was going to say the same thing. The people making fun of the way he dresses probably live in jorts and show off their plumber’s crack as they search packs at Target.
This card was not Evan’s. That was a PSA 10 1953 Topps.
Mathis actually did own that 1952 PSA 9 that just sold for over 5 Mil. He came on here and said that the Mantle was already in a holder and graded a PSA 9 when he was around 9 years old. In other words, he is saying that he never had access to the card in it's raw form which should put to rest any speculation of him doing anything to alter it.
Dude, stop spying on me.... I retired my cargos 3 or 4 years ago, and besides the extra pockets come in handy! lol
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OMG what happened to Sammy? That is a funny comparison. Thank you Larkin!
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Never understand why so many think high prices are good for the hobby. If I budget around the same % of income to spend each year - if prices rise faster than my salary I get to add less. Every year more cards are forever out of my price range. Bring on a crash!!! Until the list of cards I wish I had is smaller than the cards I do have (which I cannot imagine living long enough to happen), record prices are a bad thing.
Congrats to the buyer - if I had the means, I would be buying cards like this too.
Would you? What would bring you more joy? This card in 9 at 5.3 million or the same card in $400k and 4.8 million to spend on how many other cards?
The guy buying this card at 5.3MM probably has another 4.8MM to buy all the other cards he wants too. Irrelevant.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
as an owner of two cards that passed thru his hands, this begs the question: does the headline (more like a footnote now) "once owned by super bowl champion, evan mathis" bring an overall negative or positive "connotation" on a cards value?
Correct. The card was owned by Levi Bleam of 707 sportscards fame— he is as old school a collector and hobby presence as they come. The card was thus in its PSA 9 holder for many, many, many years. I recall seeing it in Levi's Registry Set well over a decade ago. There's lots of uninformed haters out there, LOL, so I 100% agree with the other posts above; it is just such a bad look when someone anonymously tries to spew bile, invective, and hate on such a card or purchase on the internet. Big Daddy Kane might offer such people a quarter for playing themselves. Any card enthusiast no matter what they collect should just tip their cap whenever a fellow collector grabs something they want that makes them happy.
I assume someone who spends $5.3MM on a single card is unlikely to spend their entire
card budget for the foreseeable future on one card. If my budget was $5.3MM and I could never spend more, I would do something like you propose.
However, it always surprises me that the top of the top in all forms of collectibles do not sell for more. Say two people who each have $1B get into the hobby. Both are working on a T-206 set and need the Wagner. One comes up for auction. At what incremental dollar amount is life happier with the cash than the card? To me that amount is a lot higher than the highest end typically goes for.
For example, David Gilmour’s “Black Strat” guitar that he used on their most popular albums sold for $3.975MM. Obviously the two highest bidders have a lot of disposable income. Guess you have to set a top - but if I am willing to spend $3.87MM for it - I must really want it. Someone went that high but would then not go to $4MM. This is a one of a kind item that they both must have wanted badly to set the World Record for the most ever paid for a guitar - yet one person who could have afforded to go higher decided to stop. I guess you have to set a top - but sooner or later two people will find the same item as the thing they want most in the world. Would think that happens enough to set these prices higher than they are in just about every arena of collectibles be it dinosaur fossils, historical documents, rare books, cars, cards, etc.
It always surprises me when a Wagner or Plank or 1914 Baltimore Sun Babe Ruth or other truly iconic and rare card comes up for auction that someone doesn’t pay more than what it sold for. When someone pays a new record for something truly rare I think “good for him or her” and would congratulate them on adding something to be proud of to their collection - the same as I do for many on here who post their pick-ups each month. Every card I buy makes me happier than if I had the cash in the bank. I assume it is the same for those with much more cash in the bank. I enjoy our hobby and have since I was a kid.
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Bingo, yes, this!
I don't have a single regret with any of my bigger purchases. The white whales in a collection bring much more satisfaction than storing the money in the bank. My biggest regrets are the opposite...KEEPING the money in the bank and not going for it. Of course I'm not financially reckless or stupid.
The hunt, the chase, the score, and the reminiscing. Overall enjoying the cards. Men on cardboard LOL
Imagine if Musk or Bezos decided to get into cards - $5 million to them is like a nickel to us.
I believe some Wall Streeters already are hence the big runup. Starting to view cards as an asset class
Yeah, I realize a lot of high grade cards are turning out to be trimmed these days but ...
There is a (relatively) big pile of high grade 52 Mantles, no? From the Mr Mint find that yielded both PSA 10s? Is it so hard to believe it also yielded this particular 9? C'mon.
Goldin Auctions has a PSA 8 listed now that is already at $555,000 with 15 days to go
That was neither what I implied nor what I meant. Calling my comment "irrelevant" is rude, condescending, and unwarranted.
I was talking about the joy of collecting. Spending $X on one card in 9 vs less in 8 + a hell of a lot more cards = a hell of a lot more joy.
It's interesting that when i was growing up in the 1960's, many if not most stamp collectors thought of collecting baseball cards as a childish waste of money.
Well here it is 2021 and see what a mint 1952 Topps Mantle sells for. While most mint 1952 US postage stamps barely sell for face value if that.
I think that baseball card collectors got the last laugh on this one. LOL
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40 years ago, my sister was collecting stamps; me, baseball cards.
I wonder whatever happened to those stamps
condescension talk aside... to you, perhaps. of course, miatas are allowed on the autobahn too, i guess.
The nice thing about this hobby is that there is no wrong way to collect. Presumably there are people who would get a lot more joy from having 1,000,000 1988 vg Donruss commons than one 1989 Upper Deck Griffey in 10, but I'll bet there are a lot of people who would prefer the other side. It is silly to say that everyone should think that more cards is always better. Bottom line is that some people prefer better cards and some prefer more cards. It's not for us to say that other people are collecting incorrectly.
Didn’t mean your comment was irrelevant. I meant in terms of the buyers finances (most likely anyway). No offense intended.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
What if everyone was collecting baseball cards and not collecting stamps in the 60's? I'd bet Mantles wouldn't be near the value they are today, and stamps would be higher in value than face.
Mom should have another holiday: "Mom Threw Out My Baseball Cards Day"
I wish I had the resources as a kid and now to have a 1952 Mantle. For those that did/can I salute you. Enjoy the card and the price rise.
I of course can only speak for my neighborhood, the people I knew, and the school i intended as a kid...back then there were basically no adult baseball card collectors. And it seemed like almost every other adult out there had a stamp collection of some sort, large or small. Stores specializing only in collectable stamps were prevalent throughout the area.
Basically with baseball cards, they were seen as kids playthings, and that mind frame included most kids. Perhaps a similar analogy would be winning and accumulating poker chips on a free to play website. Fun to do, but not worth anything of monetary value.
In fact most if not virtually all kids saw the previous years baseball cards as not worth anything even for fun value. They only wanted the current years baseball cards with all the new pics, and updated stats on the back of the card. Very few kids kept their older baseball cards, or their mothers threw the cards out for them.
Of all the card collectors i knew, and there were many, i was the only one who had any interest in saving and accumulating the older cards. I don't know why i did it, i just enjoyed doing it. And i guess there enough of those like me throughout the country who saved enough old cards to have them available today.
The one thing i wish i could have envisioned, but of course it would be impossible to do as a kid, would have been to store the cards differently, not with rubber bands, loose in shoeboxes, etc. I doubt if Albert Einstein could have foreseen the future advent of not only card grading, but the strong emphasis on corners.
As a kid, i could see the difference between a centered and nicely print registered card, versus an off center card with poor print registration, etc. But i could have never envisioned the extreme value difference between a card with four sharp corners versus three sharp corners and a little ding.
Oh well, i could ramble on about this, but i'll stop here before it turns into a dissertation.