Thanks for sharing your story and insights, MattyC. I agree on the assessed value of this faultless, amazing Mantle. Glad it got bumped to a 10, when it was in fact too strong of a 9 not to be assessed the ultimate grade.
I know the owner of what he's coined, "The Maltese Falcon of Baseball Cards", feels doubly so.
It's the 1953 Stahl-Meyer Franks Mickey Mantle in PSA 9 MINT condition. Unique, 1 of 1. THE perfect portrait of Mickey.
Furthermore, The Maltese Falcon Mickey Mantle is almost perfectly centered.
With the sheer value of all the cards in an older Topps set, and the time it requires to build a given set, it has ever so slowly made the PSA Set Registry irrelevant. Mind you, I am strictly referring to an older Topps set painstakingly built to PSA 8-10 standard. The buyers with the boo coo like exclusivity, and they enjoy impressing. It's better ( "better" as in the way of exercising more fiduciary responsibility to themselves, and more gratifying) to concentrate on a key game-face player, or an array of HOF rookie cards. In my experience, a suite of "the favored few" tends to make a more compelling display. A collection of prized pieces, so to speak, rather than a set of hundreds and hundreds of commons, several dozen stars and a dozen major stars. I might be wrong, but I doubt it.
-----Brian Powell