The Story of Mickey Mantle

Recently, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card fetched $12.6 million in an auction. This card has become the most iconic and valuable card in the entire sports card hobby. But why? Why this card? In this article, we're going to look at who Mickey Mantle was, and reflect on the why this card has become so iconic in the world of sports card collecting and investing.

Mini-Biography of Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle was born in 1931 in Oklahoma, and was named after Mickey Cochrane (no, not Mickey Mouse, in case you were wondering, which I did wonder, since Mickey Mouse debuted just 3 years before Mickey Mantle's birth). Mickey Cochrane was a Hall of Fame catcher who is still considered one of the best catchers in baseball history and was active at the time of Mickey Mantle's birth.

As a teenager, Mantle was an athlete and played baseball, basketball and football. In fact, he was so good at football that he was offered a scholarship to play halfback for the University of Oklahoma's football team, but due to a nearly life threatening situation, his path moved away from football. During his sophomore year, he sustained an injury that almost resulted in him loosing his leg. If it hadn't been for a newly invented medicine, known as penicillin, Mantle would have had to have had his leg amputated in order to survive. Pretty intense.

But Mickey's first love was baseball, and he was really good at it as well, so he pursued this path more intensively. He began his professional baseball career in the minor leagues in 1949 at the tender age of 17, immediately after graduating from high school. During his first season in the minors, Mantle did quite well, though during one long slump, his father had to really work hard to convince him to not give up and quit baseball altogether. But, of course, Mantle got through the slump, and ended up batting .313 that season.

In 1950, Mantle was promoted from the Class-D Independence Yankees to the Class-C Joplin Miners, where he won the batting title with a .383 batting average to go along with his 26 home runs and 136 RBI's. His one struggle, however, was on defense. He had been playing shortstop in both of his minor league seasons, and he just wasn't that good at it.

Prior to the 1951 season, 19 year old Mickey Mantle was invited to attend the New York Yankees pre-season spring training camp. The Yankees manager, Casey Stengel, was very impressed by what he saw and decided to call him up to the majors, though he was moved to rightfield so that his defensive liabilities would be lessened.

A hype train followed Mantle into the majors. He was given the uniform number 6, because Babe Ruth had been #3, Lou Gehrig #4, Joe DiMaggio #5, and now Mantle was supposed to be next in line of New York Yankee greats. And, as we know now, he would definitely go on to meet those expectations. However, his rookie season in the majors was not all sunshine and roses.

After not doing so well, he was sent down to the minors once again, this time to the Yankees top farm team, the Kansas City Blues. After an initial continuing slump, Mantle broke through and ended up hit .361 during his time in Kansas City. After 40 games there, he was called back up to the Yankees to finish off the rest of the 1951 season in the majors. He hit .267 with 13 home runs and 65 RBI's during the 96 games of his 1951 rookie season. Unfortunately, during the World Series game of his rookie year, Mantle sustained a terrible knee injury that would effect him throughout his 18 years in the majors. He played the rest of his career with a torn ACL!

In 1952, Mantle was much more prepared to become the star player he had the potential to be. 1951 may have been his rookie year, but the 1952 year was really his emergence as a star. The Yankees star center-fielder, Joe DiMaggio, had retired from baseball after the 1951 season, and starting in 1952 Mantle was moved into the center-field position. During the 1952 season, Mantle was selected to the All-Star team, and he helped lead his Yankees to a World Series victory. During that World Series, he hit .400 with a .600 slugging percentage.

During his career with the Yankees, he accomplished many feats, including being the all-time world series record holder for home runs, runs scored and RBI's. During what many would say was his best season, in 1956, Mantle bat .353 with 52 home runs and 130 RBI's, winning the Triple Crown and the first of three MVP awards. During his career he was an all-star every year but his first. He was the batting champion once, the home run champion four times, and even managed to get the Gold Glove Award one year. He retired from the Major Leagues in 1968 and was admitted to the Hall of Fame in 1974.

Why is His 1952 Topps Card So Iconic (and $12.6 million!)?

Today, of all Mickey Mantle's baseball cards, the 1952 Topps of his is definitely his most iconic. And as we known from his story here, 1952 was really his coming out year into the realm of stardom. But his rookie year, in which he played 96 games with the Yankees was 1951. And he does have a rookie card from 1951. In 1951, Topps didn't have the MLB license to produce cards, that was held by Bowman.

Many consider the 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle card to be Mantle's true rookie. From analyzing the pop counts of PSA and other grading companies, we now know that the print runs of his 1951 Bowman are relatively similar to those of his 1952 Topps. So it is not scarcity that makes the 1952 Topps card so much more valuable. Whereas the 1952 Topps Mantle has sold for a record $12.6 million, the most the 1951 Bowman has ever sold for is, as far as I can tell, is a measly $750,000 in a PSA 9 back in April of 2018. There is one single PSA 10 graded 1951 Bowman Mantle rookie out there though, and if that one ever did go up for sale, especially since the market has gone up a lot for high end cards since 2018, I'm sure it's sale would dwarf that $750,000. But still, that's nowhere near the $12.6 million of the 1952 Topps card.

There are several additional reasons for this. For one, the narrative for many years was that the 1952 Topps card was significantly more rare than the 1951 Bowman. In more recent years, however, with the data collecting of grading companies, that narrative has been proven largely untrue. But nonetheless, it was a narrative that put the 1952 card on a more valuable trajectory through several decades.

In addition, 1952 was Topps' first major post-war issue. And as we can see from other first issue sets throughout the years from top brands, first sets often spark more value than subsequent sets do, even more so if there are iconic names in the set.

Also, to many people, the eye appeal of the 1952 Topps card just simply outshines that of the 1951 Bowman.

But despite these reasons, which are all compelling in their own right, I would suggest, as have others, that Mantle's 1951 Bowman card is actually undervalued in comparison (I mean, not that it is undervalued in comparison to anything outside of sports cards, because objectively it's pretty crazy that a little cardboard rectangle is worth multiple millions of dollars). But in comparison to the 1952 Topps card, it does seem undervalued. So if you have a spare million hiding under your couch cushions, you may want to consider finding yourself a well graded 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle card.

Note: This YouTube video was made before the $12.6 million dollar sale, but the other historical information in the video is still all relevant.