This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/15/2020
Entering his 33rd year of life, Mickey Mantle was starting to show his age. No longer the legend that willed the Yankees back into championship status with a Triple Crown season in 1956 when he was just hitting his prime at 24, Mantle was coming off another injury-shortened season where he smacked just 19 home runs, and over his final three years,
he would not hit more than 23 round-trippers nor drive in over 56 runs. Unlike the legends before him, none of the Yankees prospects became "the next big thing" for Mantle to pass the torch to and the team fell into a downward spiral that would last a decade. Unfamiliar territory to say the least, especially for a franchise that topped even the great Montreal Canadians as the undisputed kings of their sport. The featured specimen, Mantle's 1966 Topps card graded PSA 9 MINT, looks every bit as brilliant in person as it does in the scan. MINT to GEM MINT edges meet at similarly high-end corners, each of which can ably state its case for GEM MINT inclusion. The centering is about as good as it gets with borders that are an unadulterated white. The sharp image of Mantle is one of the finest we've ever examined, and on the whole, the surface is essentially perfect. Even the reverse, with its intense black and salmon pigmentation, presents as a pack-fresh canvas, completely refusing to succumb to the color fading present on most '66 Topps cards, even ones rated as high as this. In short, the offered Mantle is a masterpiece that displays many GEM MINT qualities. With just one PSA 10 on record, it wouldn't surprise us to learn that this is the second finest example known.