From Rookie to Farewell: Every Mickey Mantle Base Card Has a Story! - Ep. 3.26

Mickey Mantle, the Commerce Comet, the Mick the switch hitter from Oklahoma who changed everything when he walked in the Yankee Stadium in 1951, smack dab in the middle of the 20th century. And he never really left. Well, at least not in the minds of baseball card collectors everywhere. Today we're Talking about the 21 base cards of Mickey man. Hey how I'm David Gunns build a better sports card collection. Working with a real world budget. That's what we talk about now. Making mail cards takes a little bit more of a real world budget. You have to plan for something like that. You have to sell maybe some of your cards to get up to be able to buy a Mickey Mantle card. But today this is just about sports cards history. That's what we talked about a lot of times on this channel. Just to give a chance to educate viewers, educate myself. When I do the research, it's just a lot of fun. So today we're taking a closer look at all 21 of Mickey Mantle's base cards. From his 1951 Bowman rookie card all the way to his 1969 Topps farewell portraits, photographs, Bowman tops wood grain borders, TV sets on the cards. We're covering everything now. Mantle played 18 seasons in the major. So you might be wondering, well, how'd you get 21 cards? Where'd that come from? Well, a few years he had cards from both Bowman and in Topps. In the early 50s those two companies were locked in an all out cardboard war for the baseball card market. So it makes sense, right? Mickey Mantle was the biggest prize and on the battlefield for both of these manufacturers. Now what makes these cards so fascinating isn't just the player, it's the stories behind him. That's what we're gonna prove here. The lost cards dumped into the ocean, the $25 oil paintings, the TV shaped borders, the career defining stats hidden on the back. Every single one of these cards we're gonna talk about today has a story worth telling. And that's exactly what we're doing, telling stories. So whether you're a lifelong Mickey Mantle collector, a casual fan of the hobby, or maybe you just love baseball and baseball history, stick around. By the end of this episode, you'll never look at a Mickey Mantle card the same way again. As a matter of fact, I think you'll look at every single one of Mickey Mouse cards in a different way going forward. So let's, let's go back. Let's start at the beginning in 1951 with the card that started it all. 1951 bowman, Mickey mantle, his true rookie card, the first card of the player with the most sought after baseball cards in all of history. It's also, strangely, the last card depicting 100% healthy Mickey Mantle. You see, in game two of the 1951 World Series, he chased a fly ball hit by Willie Mays and Mantle's cleat caught on an exposed rubber drainage cap in the Yankee Stadium outfield grass. He was attempting to stop a collision with Superstar legendary Joe DiMaggio in the outfield and Mantle severely twisted his knee, tearing both cartilage and his ACL. So he played the remaining 17 years of his career without a fully intact ACL, and he still became one of the greatest players to ever live. That same year, 1951, Mickey's father, Mutt Mantle, M U T T E quite the name. Mutt Mantle died of Hodgkin's disease at just 40 years old. Never fully witnessed the legend his son would become. Isn't that sad? Hodgkin's disease also claimed both of Mickey's brothers, and that led Mickey to believe the same fate awaited him. A mindset that helps explain why he didn't exactly live a cautious life. 1952, tops. Now, this is often called the Mona Lisa of the trading card industry because this card is so rare, it's so expensive, and it's so much more appreciated than Mantle's actual Rookie card card. 311 number. 311. It was the first of the High Number series which went to 407, 311 to 407. And legend has it that those high numbered cards were printed so late that top struggled to sell. So boxes upon boxes were loaded onto a barge and dumped into the ocean late in the 1950s to clear warehouse space. Nine of those 97 high numbered cards featured hall of Famers, including Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and the Eddie Matthews rookie card, the best rookie card in that 1952 set. Now, on the back of Mantle's card, writer cyber, who was kind of like the grandfather of Topps card designs, he called Mantle DiMaggio's successor. And that was fitting given that DiMaggio himself had called Mantle the greatest rookie he'd ever seen, even if he wasn't thrilled about being replaced. Now, you know that these 1952 Topps mantle, as we mentioned, they're pretty rare. They difficult to find. What's even more crazy is these were double printed cards, you see, because it was the first card on that last series and they didn't have a full one. Hundred cards or however many cards to fill out the sheet. That first card got duplicated towards the end as the back of the end of the back of the all the cards. So it got double printed on that. As a matter of fact, if we look at PSA's pop reports on all of Mickey Mantle's cards, the 1952 one has the least slabs on the pop report. There's only 2900, almost 3000 slabs on that PSA pop report from 1952 tops 1951 Bowman, the rookie card, the true rookie card has 4200 slaps. So that's how rare that 52 tops was. But both of those are the most rare of all of Mantle's cards on PSA's POP report. All right, so we move on. Let's look at 1952 Bowman. Now. Imagine cracking open a pack of pulling a 1952 Mickey Mantle card and you realize it's, it's not the tops card. That'd be painful, right? That's the collector's equivalent of getting a 1989 Ken Griffey Jr Topps traded rookie card instead of the upper deck card. It's just like that, except multiply that by like a million, right? Still, since the 51 Bowman and the 52 Topps cards are out of reach for most collectors, many fans flock to the 52 Bowman as the next best option. It's actually a beautiful card. One fun detail. Mantle actually joined the Yankees wearing number six, switching to number seven mid season in 1952, or I'm sorry, in mid season in 1951, which is what the year is that this 1952 card was depicting. So now we go on to 1953, but we go back to tops many cards. Many collectors consider this 1953 tops card to be Mantle's best looking card. It's a gem. The artwork was an individual oil painting commissioned from New Jersey artist Jerry Dvorak. And he charged tops $25 per painting. And he'd do like three, three or four of them during the weekend. He would paint these things. It was also a pioneering set. See, this was the first Topps card to feature baseball trivia questions on the, on the back of the cards. And it was the first to include comics. Some of those comics were drawn by Jack Davis, one of the original Mad magazine cartoonists, if you believe that. American League players got a red nameplate banner on the bottom. National League players got black. Then here's another interesting point is the 2018 Topps Living set paid homage to this design and the question every collector debates is would you rather have this car, the 1953 tops Mickey Mantle, or would you rather have the 1952 Bowman a year earlier? What would you like? I want to know. Drop it in the comments. How about the 1953 Bowman? Let's talk about that one. Three seasons as a Yankee, three World Series titles. It's pretty good. It's a pretty good run, though. The Yankees had actually won five World Series consecutively at that point, but Mick was only around for three of them. More importantly, this set introduced the first true color photographs on baseball cards, predating the commonly cited 1957 tops by four years. PSA notes that because of these color photos, the 1953 Bowman set is considered among the most beautiful of the modern era, offering facial details and uniform features never before seen on a card. It's pretty cool. Hey, I thought I'd jump in here real quick. I wanted to remind you. Make sure you go download your video free Happy Hobby Collection Checklist which you can find at ghana stock substack.com it's the happy Hobby Sports Card Collection Checklist. What is that you say? Well this is the ultimate tool for sports car collectors and you get it free when you subscribe to the Happy Hobby Sports Card newsletter. By the way, it's a free newsletter. You can subscribe for free. Are you ready to take control of your collection? Elevate it to that next level? Don't miss your chance on getting this exclusive checklist, a powerful digital spreadsheet designed by collectors for collectors. Claim yours instantly whenever you sign up for the Happy Happy Sports Card newsletter. You can easily track your sports cards on the go with our user friendly Google Sheet. Your entire collection is always at your fingertips as whether you're at a local card shop, trade night, major card show, you can organize your best cards with the have tab. Like got it, have it, need it, all that stuff. This is your have tab is where you put all your best cards, the grades, all that good stuff. Any notes? You can build your dream want list here. What cards you wanting? Put them in here. Stop wondering do I already own this card? What I look for the the next show? What do I want to get? So make sure you check it out. Go to ghanis.substack.com and subscribe and you'll get an email where you can download the free Happy hobby collection checklist. 1954 Bowman we're sticking with Bowman this time. We're going to Bowman because that's the only car that Mickey had in 1954 man is locked into a Bowman only contract the this point, making this and the 1955 Bowman card his only cards for those years. Now, this isn't the flashiest card in the set, and it's not the flashiest card in Mickey Mantle's player run either. But there's something refreshing about seeing Mantle smiling and relaxed compared to his early brooding poses, so to speak. Stick with Bowman again. 1955 Bowman. Now Mantle's final Bowman card. This one. Both Bowman and Topps, they went horizontal in 1955, but Bowman did something unique. They framed their cards to look like a television set, which was fitting. You see in By 1950, 1955, nearly half of all American homes had a TV in their house. And the Yankees were the most watched team in baseball with Mantle as their superstar. Look closely at the bottom of the TV frame and you'll see where it says little spot, says Color TV Label. That's interesting. Also, given that Color TVs had only just reached consumer markets in 1954 and they wouldn't become mainstream for another decade. These TV border cards are notoriously condition sensitive, and the brown wood framing is prone to chipping and major centering issues, which makes high grades of this card very difficult to find. All right, now we head back to Topps. Because 1956 Topps was the only card in the game. Topps acquired Bowman in January 1956, ending the competition and giving Mantle his first Topps card in three years. It's also his first Tops card with a smile on it. Hey, Mick, cheer up. Featured an action shot of Mickey robbing a home run alongside a grinning headshot. Many collectors rank this 1956 Topps Mickey Mantle among one of the best Topps designs ever. This is also the first of just three consecutive years where both Mantle and Ted Williams appeared in the same top set as active hitters. Ted Williams was a manager later on, but that's a different story. 1957 tops. This is a landmark set in hobby history. With Bowman gone, Topps standardized the cardboard size of baseball cards to two and a half by three and a half. What we still use today, the same dimensions that we use right now for the first time. Topps also included full year by year statistics on the back and Mantle's stats. Boy, they tell the story. Batting title, Home run leader. RBI leader. Run scored leader. Slugging leader. Unanimous mvp. The Yankee pinstripes against the dark backdrop make this one of the most visually striking cards of not just that set, but of that whole era. It's also the first card to depict Mantle swinging from the left side. The final card in the set, number 407, also featured Mantle and Yogi Berra together. Only the second time that they appeared on the they appeared on the same card, the first of which was a 1953 Bowman card featuring Mantle, Bera and Hank Bauer. So just so you know, I'm going through this. This is just the base cards that I'm going through. I'm not going to be listening off the All Star cards, the league leader cards, the duo and combo cards. I'm not doing it. This is just his base card in every set. That's what we're really interested in, right? Let's go to 1958 tops. Fun fact, it was the 1958 mantle all star card, not this base card. Even though I just said I'm not going to talk about All Star cards that broadcaster Bob Costas famously carried in his wallet for years. You see, this set also marked the first time that Stan Mutual appeared on a TPPs card since 1953, making it the only year Mantle and Musual and Williams, Ted Williams were all in the same top set. Actually, strike that. Mugel was not in tops 53. This is his first tops card altogether. The back of Mantle's card shows his career high.365 batting average from 1957, which still wasn't enough to win the batting title as Ted Williams hit.388 that year. It's also the first season that the Yankees had New York entirely to its to themselves. See, the Dodgers and Giants had just relocated to California. 1959 tops. That red border. Man, it just works. Compared to the yellow background of the 1958 card, this one pops in a way that makes it one of the more visually satisfying Mantle cards of the decade. It's not really a fact other than it's a fact. The red border looks awesome. 1960 tops. Mantle's last landscape format card. And there's a lot going on here. The main photo is a beauty. A smiling Mantle with his bat resting on his shoulder. But the multi color lettering and coral background, the smaller inset photo, it pushes things kind of like into this circus poster territory. Am I right? The inset, it also cuts off the top of his bat, hides his feet behind the Yankees logo. It's one of the Mantle based cards that shows him batting left handed. But there's just. There's just too much happening here in my opinion. 1961 tops though it goes from crazy to very basic. A sharp over Correction from that 1960 tops. Chaos the design is spare and quiet. Maybe a little too quiet, if you ask me, but Mantle's card pulls it off. Rosy cheeks, broad shoulders. The pink letter panel behind his name. Pretty cool. Sometimes simple just works though, right? 1962 tops we're into now. The iconic wood grain border. It's back. And it became one of the most recognizable designs in the hobby's history. C Tops revisited this back in 1987, 25 years after this set came out. And it was equally iconic for all junk wax collectors. A whole new generation of card collectors love that wood grain design. You know, we're still waiting for the 2012 version, which never happened. I don't know what why Tops would do that. Go from the 1962 wood grain. 25 years later 198725 years later 2012. That was one of the most boring card designs ever. Well, this 1962 top set, it arrived right on the heels of Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth home run record, a record many Yankees fans had expected mantle to break first. Actually, 1961, I believe that was his career high in home runs. 1963, three tops. Now, this was patterned after the 1953. 1963 was patterned after the 1953 tops design. And this set features a name panel that extends across the full bottom border with a circular black and white action photo inset. And it's the first vertical Tops Mantle card to feature two images of Mantle on the front. The back of card notes that Mantle already ranked seventh all time in home runs. It's 1963, with six seasons left to go. It also mentions his 14 World Series home runs, leaving him just one shy of Babe Ruth's record of 15 at that time. One more note on this. Mantle's 31 years old in this card. 1963. That's the same age Shohei Ohtani is in the 2026 baseball season. Mantle had just six years left in him. So I think that's a little worth keeping in mind as we continue to appreciate Ohtani right now. Maybe just six years left. One final wrinkle about this one. Mantle wasn't the most valuable card in this set, if you can believe that. That honor goes to Pete Rose's rookie card, 1964 tops. The enormous team name splashed across the top make this design instantly recognizable. Though opinions are widely split on this, some feel the bold lettering overwhelms the player photography. Now, one upside is it's not particularly condition sensitive, but it does make it one. So that makes it one of the more accessible Mantle cards to acquire in Pretty good shape at a pretty good price. Mantle still tops the value chart for all the cards in this set. 1965 tops. Now this is one of the best, best looking and most beloved Mantle cards out there. The Mick is in full follow through on a swing with bright color all around him. And this card commemorates his 1964 season where he hit.303 with 35 homers and 111 RBIs, helping the Yankees to what would be his final World Series appearance. Also, what's interesting is Mantle played in an exhibition game at the Astrodome to help inaugurate the world's first multi purpose domed stadium. And Mantle hit the ballpark's first home run in April on April 9, 1965. Pretty cool, right? I like that. That's a good fact. 1966 tops. Mantle is seen here taking some hacks in a batting cage swinging lefty. But this was the first time since 1956 that Topps released a set that had Mantle on just one card on the checklist. No all star card, no duo card, no combo, no league leaders, none of that. Just this one card in 1966. 1967. However, this was Mantle's last headshot image for a card. His final two cards showed him in his batting stance. The card also lists him as outfield, despite him playing first base for the entirety of that 1967 season because of his worn down body, he was. You know, it's ironic too when you think about it, because 1967 tops. We're still six years away from the designated hitter. So I wonder if the DH was in play at this point. How many more years maybe we might get out of Mickey Mantle. Joe Pepitone would famously replace the Mick in the outfield for the Yankees. Mantle came the sixth member of the.500 Home Run Club on May 14, 1967, two years after Willie Mays became the fifth member. So ahead of Mantle at this point was just Babe Ruth, number two, Jimmy Foxx, number three, Mel Ott, number four, Ted Williams, and then Maze and then Mantle. 1968 tops. All right, so this burlap design card, you know, it meant colored borders. Once again for Mantle. That's not a great thing. We're not big fans of that. This is the fifth time that Mantle Mantle's cards would be missing full white borders. The vertical back was back for the second straight year and that limited how much of Mantle's career stats that collectors would get to see on the back of that card. Thankfully, Topps corrected that, bringing back the horizontal backs in 1969. Speaking of 1969, this is it. The last cartoon. 1969 tops Mickey Mantle. Mantle announced his retirement from baseball on March 1, 1969, and that's noted on the back of his card here. Mantle's final card had his complete stats on the back including 536 home runs, which left him third all time in home runs, just behind Babe and Willie Mays. This card also coincided with Reggie Jackson's rookie card. 1969 Topps rookie card. Another slugging Yankee legend. Eventually after you leave the A's and the Orioles, whoever whoever else is with before they got to the Yankees, I think just Orioles maze. Reggie would finish his career with 27 more home runs than Mickey Male a. Of course 43 of Reggie's home runs came as a designated hitter. So that. That counts. That's. That makes it a little different right now. We mentioned PSA's pop counts earlier how the 1952 tops had the lowest pop count. 1951 Bowman right behind it. It's interesting to note. You'd think the 1969 tops would be the most the most graded Mantle card because they were more printed at that point. But 1969 is are actually the third most led by number one. Was that 1968 tops Mickey Mantle cart and right behind that is 1966 tops at 27,000. 28,000 cards slabs in the 1968 Mickey Mantle though and just 24,000 of this 1969 top card. So there you have it. A whole lot of words. That's a whole lot of Mickey Mantle. I want to know what you think. What's your favorite Mickey Mantle card? I want to hear it. Shoot it in the comments below. If you're listening to the podcast, I want you to to send it to me@ghaniscardsgmail.com. what is your favorite Mickey Mantle card? There's a lot to choose from. Maybe I should make it what's your favorite card from the 50s? And maybe I should. What's your favorite Mickey Mantle card from the the 60s? I want to hear which one you like the most. Drop it in the comments. Listen, it's tough to own Mickey Mantle cards. We all know that. I have, I have one Mickey Mantle card. 1958 All Star Mickey. Man. It's one of my favorite cards. It's not even one of these base cards that I just talked about, but I love that card. It's tough to get them. You got. You got to do some maneuvering with the money to get that right. Sell some of your cards. Go track one down. Make a game plan to get just one Mickey Mantle card in your collection. Maybe it's a duo card. Maybe it's a Headlines or the league leaders. Just get one Mickey Mantle card in your collection. Whatever you do, get a Mickey mantle, you get two Mickey Mouse. Get 10 Mickey Mouse. Whatever you do, make sure you have a happy hobby.