This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/16/2015
When Mickey Mantle arrived in New York City, he was a 19-year old kid offering great promise to a franchise famous for producing legendary ballplayers. Raised in an Oklahoma mining town whose entire population couldn't fill a single section of Yankee Stadium, there were few people more ill-equipped to initially handle the bright lights and glitzy lifestyle that "The Big Apple" had to offer. As if this wasn't enough pressure for the baby-faced teen, the Yankees brass decided to hand jersey #6 to Mantle, declaring in no uncertain terms that he was expected to follow Ruth (#3), Gehrig (#4), and DiMaggio (#5), carrying on a tradition of dominance that had become the Yankees dynasty. It's not too surprising that the pressure was too much to bear, and Mantle's performance in 1951 was ... ordinary. Mantle returned to the Yankees in 1952 with the request that he be given jersey #7, and after several seasons of 20+ homers and a batting average hovering around .300, Mantle broke through to display the awesome baseball prowess that has earned him a place among his legendary predecessors. Over the 60+ years that Topps has been producing sports cards, the 1952 Mickey Mantle reigns as the premier collectible of the post-war era and ranks as one of the top five most important pasteboards to represent the over 150 years of baseball's existence. Many collectors and historians agree that this single issue has had the greatest impact on the sports card market and Topps would likely never have become the industry giant it is today without the existence of the '52 Mantle. Even Bowman's inclusion of Mantle in their 1951 series, his true rookie card, wasn't enough to stem the title wave of demand for this "giant-sized" cardboard collectible, lauded for its amazing aqua backdrop and the classic portrait of the superstar pinstriper, his golden bat resting calmly on his right shoulder. The offered masterpiece is among the finest surviving specimens, many of which went unsold in the 1950s and met with a watery demise just miles from where Mantle made his legendary name. Even a low-grade beater commands serious money, but we're appealing to the world's most avid collectors with this phenomenal PSA 8 example. This is a stunning, pack-fresh specimen that firmly personifies the PSA 8 grade with the NM/MT left edge and lower right corner combining with an upper right endpoint that appears NM/MT+ to MINT, joining subtly rough-cut NM/MT edges around the perimeter. The positioning of Mantle's legendary artwork gently favors the northeast, well within the bounds of the NM/MT assessment, but the obvious main attraction is the immaculate image projected from within its deep, black boundary. With consistent NM/MT qualities amplified by the MINT image, it must unquestionably be considered as one of the finest when compared side by side with its 31 competitors in the NM/MT 8 class at PSA. Even the most haggard examples of this issue are soaring in price as of late, often touching five-figure dollar levels, so there's no telling what price point a museum-quality piece like this might fetch in three years, in one year or even a month from now. A genuinely golden opportunity like this arises very sporadically; it would be a foolish gamble to assume that the next chance, whenever that is, will provide the same quality or be attainable anywhere near the price level.