Heritage Rosen Mantle - Greatest Card Ever Auctioned?
 

Just saw The Card. Astounding and exceeded expectations. Just gorgeous, and with provenance to boot.

Wonder where it will end-- wonder how it will affect the card in all grades, especially those examples with rare centering.

Provenance in an old baseball card-- let alone tracing it to the pack-- is incredibly rare in our hobby. Bravo to the owner-- what a beauty. Hope the winner lends it to a museum occasionally.

Who is Rosen Mantle?

mr mint alan rosen funny robert

Yea...haha..

Wow, that's an attractive card:https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball/1...ription-071515
Its nice that they included the video of Rosen discussing the find.

I guess it sold raw for $50K in 1991. Adjusted for inflation, that is about $100K.

Heritage expects it to sell for $10M or more.

Not bad.

That's about double what that PSA 9 sold for a few in January 2021.

Never heard of any of these cards being traced back to a pack? Interesting to compare something like the Rosen 1952 Topps purchase to the black swamp find of e98. The main difference being the overall population of existing cards. If the black swamp find were t206s and not E 98 they would be absorbed and embraced in the hobby As some of the finest examples known to exist just like these 1952 topps.

Mine is. Which is frankly why I love it so much, beyond even centering.

As to the Rosen card, I thought the find's owner had the case in his basement-- so while not to the exact pack, pretty close.

Just imagining the e98s as t206's is fun. I also sometimes wonder how cool it would be if Ruth had a CJ. Fun hobby day dreaming.

Yeah just imagine if there were a crackerjack Babe Ruth!!

I'm guessing it will hammer at about half Heritage's 10M est.

12.95m

A Little More Background on This
 

Believe it or not, I know the man who is selling this card. I will respect his privacy and not mention his name. Back in November 2004 I visited his home in New Jersey and saw A LOT of his baseball memorabilia collection. To this day it remains THE most incredible personal collection I have ever seen in my life.
He told me himself that he was the guy at MSG who brought his son with him to that show and worked out the deal with Alan Rosen. As many of you know, it was written up in Rosen's book, True Mint.
An earlier post mentioned that the owner kept this incredible 1952 Mantle in his basement. That's true. When I walked in I first said hello to his wife and then headed right downstairs. His collection is behind a floor to ceiling bank vault. He told me to turn my head as he dialed the numbers to open the vault. I walked into a truly amazing array of collectibles. He truly loves The Mick. I couldn't believe the items he had in this room. I won't go into detail out of respect to this fine gentleman.
As for the card? Back then it was raw but protected in plastic, of course. Next to it was a "to whom it may concern" letter from Rosen stating that it was from the find. Rosen made it clear in this letter that in his opinion it was THE finest card from that 1986 discovery. I kid you not.
To this day (hard to believe it was 18 years ago) I considered myself truly blessed to have seen this card up close, not to mentioned many other items once owned by The Mick. Like, WOW.
I wish this gentleman nothing but success in this auction.

I'll definitely take the over.

True "Provenance" is when you have pulled a Mantle card from its pack in the Fall of 1952.

That I did, and only paid a penny for it.


http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...mmantle52t.jpg

http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...wrapper100.jpg



TED Z

T206 Reference
.

It's already at 4 mil before buyers premium as of 11:38am on 7/25 with 33 days left

I'll give you a quarter Ted. Heck of a return on your investment. ;)

Surely this belongs in the post-WWII section, but I guess if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, so here I am. Winning bid will be $6,000,000. That's $7.2M with the premium, and just a bit under $8M once you factor in sales tax and the Heritage shipping charges (not in that order actually).

If it's the best why didn't SGC give it a 10.

I think about stuff like this all the time. Helmar Brewing has done a few "what if" cards in certain styles. But Yes one has to think how certain players, would look, on certain issues, had they been made.


Ted,

I don't think I will ever tire of seeing this picture or hearing the story. Best of luck at the National, my friend. Did you get my latest email?

- James

Ted,

That is so awesome, to have the very wrapper it came from. Exceedingly rare aspect to any card that old. Also love how much passion you clearly have for it!

I do not have the wrapper from the pack mine came from; though I do have a lovely recorded interview of its one prior owner talking to my son and I about the day he pulled it, how the pack was bought with money from his paper route, the store where he bought the pack, the town— and even how he hit the town's first little league homer!

Wish I could have pulled it myself— indeed I have always have felt like I was born in the wrong decade!

Here is mine. Why pay an extra $10,000,000 just for CORNERS! :)

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...e17d7ede_z.jpg

Top border is discolored. Back is a little off-center and possibly has a stain near the "Okla."

Yep, and already over with the BP at $5,280,000
In the last 10 or so minutes I've been logged in, it has jumped $150,000.

Great story.
Thanks for sharing. :)

Matt

The 1952 TOPPS wrapper on display is not the original one which I pulled Mantle from.
However, here are the original 4 cards that were in the 5-cent wax-pack with Mantle.

I can recall that moment 70 years ago as if it just occurred yesterday.

Matt, I appreciate your kind words.

https://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan...fhermspenc.jpg
TED Z

T206 Reference
.

Agreed amazing card and we can all own it if Leon buys it on behalf of the forum and we all chip in for fractional shares

Ted,

Thanks for sharing. I can't believe I haven't heard your story. May be one of the best hobby stories there is.

Brent

Jeff is kidding of course, but seriously if all the members (not sure how many active there are) of Net54 would contribute a few thousand dollars, Net54 would actually easily win the card. :D

Set aside the 52 mantle, how hard in general was it to get a mantle card from a pack back in the 1950s? My father said it was like hitting the lottery almost.

It sounds like this card was kept raw until this auction, when Heritage submitted to SGC. Does anyone know why they didn't submit to PSA? Did they think it wouldn't get a 10? Did they think it would fetch more as the highest-graded SGC than as one of 4 PSA 10s? It seems like a consequential decision here.

1958 Mantle All-Star was probably the easiest card of the 1950's lol.

Pulling a Mantle was not difficult. The 51 Bowman and 52 Topps highs was the only time he was in a harder to find series and he was a DP in the Topps. With his All Star cards, combo cards, appearance in many regionals, etc. he might have been literally the easiest player to get a card of in the 50’s.

Shouldn’t the yellow staining at the top prevent this from being a 9.5 Mint+? Does SGC normally allow that on Mint+ cards?

That 4.5 Mantle looks absolutely amazing

Congrats on a great card

AP article quoting owner of 1952 Mantle up for auction
 

The card's owner, Anthony Giordano, gave some quotes to the AP.

https://apnews.com/article/mlb-sport...d47c39120f8e74

Thank you, sir. That centering and brightness grabbed me at first sight and have had strong hold ever since. I still vividly remember when the great Joe T called me and said: "Matty, I found your card!"

Mr. Mint describes his 1952 find


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxUSvQ7ewQQ

I would assume it either came back a 9, then bumped at SGC, or they started there and it didn't get the 10 at PSA, but you never know.

That is the nicest 52 Mantle I've ever seen, and I won't be surprised at all if it goes well past the estimate. Either way it sounds like the card's owner made one of the best 50k investments of all time.

Love Ted’s and Marty’s story and provenance of their 52’ Mantle. Mine also came from the original owners family. I’m the second owner, here’s the story:

https://youtu.be/Ef_1ZyPVvG8

One of the consignment directors who was part of the team that delt with this card said it's cause SGC had a 9.5 grade and PSA only did 9. He said that the card was special and didn't want it to be just another mantle as there's 6 PSA 9s. He says that both companies are great choices but those were their reasons.

This was all said on the reddit baseball card forum where he's a pretty prominent member.

Jason Simonds is his name

How can SGC examine the card that was still inside a PSA holder and claiming the card wasn't trimmed and was just undersized? LOL

Why does Heritage say that the card is the Finest Known Example? It's graded SGC 9.5 which is a Mint+. In a recent SCD article written about Marshall Fogel. He says that he owns a PSA 10 version of that card which is a Gem Mint.

I always thought that a Gem Mint was better than a Mint+. So, wouldn't that mean the card owned by Fogel is considered the Finest Known Example?

I wouldn't mind owning either one of the 2 cards but I am just curious.

I believe there are 3 PSA 10s so I agree. Seems a bit odd. Would love to own any of them. The 4.5 above is amazing. 52 Mantles are just gorgeous in my opinion.

Marshall Fogel's PSA10 Mantle is based off the grading standard when PSA starts grading... which was like 25 yrs ago. Definitely not perfect Gem Mint.

When a card gets to that point of being either Mint or Gem Mint or whatever, who can really tell the difference.
The Mantle card is beautiful in any grade. It would be more beautiful in my hands.

I think the reality is that if you lined up all of the top-graded mantle 52 topps rookies graded 9.5/10… some would look dramatically better than others.

Hence the problem with arbitrary third party grading… flawed from the start, ever-changing standards. Yet time people devote to arguing and complaining about it is numbing to me?

I believe they are using Rosen's 1991 direct quote which at the time was the "finest known example".

I think this SGC 9.5 Example has the best centering and blue color out of the three PSA 10's. All are beautiful :-) and deserve their said assigned grades.

It's sometimes hard to judge color on these due to scan/picture settings, particularly Heritage's.

Bingo! (Not saying this nice Mantle....) Heritage has a separate photoshop team enhancing their images.... creases can disappear, faded colors got enhanced to pack fresh stage. :)

Well I believe it's assumed all of the very high grade Mantles came from that find. Rosen is probably the last one to see them all together. But the flip could also be referring to this being the finest SGC graded example.