Bob C., are you working for Heritage now
, or maybe Joe Orlando had input into the description? LOOOOONNNNNGGG but pretty good actually.
The hobby's first eight-figure item!
1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 SGC Mint+ 9.5 - 1985 Rosen Find - "Finest Known Example!"
The reaction is predictable, and virtually universal. Any time a paramount object sells at auction for an unusually large sum of money, the response, however phrased, boils down to a single word.
Why?
Every buyer has her or her own reply. They populate the full expanse between deep-seated appreciation for the object to dispassionate financial calculation. But that, of course, is only part of the answer, and not the interesting part.
The question is really about justification. Why is that object worth such a towering sum, they cry, in tones ranging from fascination to dismay. Explain yourself.
We'll do our best.
Here, it begins with Mickey Mantle himself, an emblematic figure of a lost and beloved era of Big Apple baseball. American enterprise enters the scene, stumbling at a key moment before assuming an enduring dominance over the competition much like the grey-eyed Okie that occupied the 311th position in its debut grand opus. The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is decimated before it is sanctified.
The print run that begins with the #311 Mantle card comes in too late and most of that high-number third series never makes it to market before the season ends. The unsold stock languishes on the Topps warehouse floor for some period of time before the decision is made to dispose of it. For reasons lost to history, the surprising method of disposal selected is burial at sea. A boat is loaded with the obsolete product, sailed several miles off the coast of New York, and pushed over the railing. The lion's share of all the high-number cards of the 1952 Topps set that ever existed is gone in an instant.
The passage of time and its spring-cleaning mothers slowly chip away at the surviving supply that was spared a descent to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean as the legend of Mickey Mantle grows through seven World Championships, three American League MVP Awards, a 1956 Triple Crown and a spellbinding 1961 home run race. The chasm between supply and demand widens, and, as the nascent sports collectibles industry begins to monetize what had historically been considered childish trinkets, the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 assumes its position upon the throne of the post-war era.
One of the pioneers of that industry was a man named Al Rosen, but the late twentieth century hobby knew him best as "Mr. Mint." It was a moniker he had bestowed upon himself, one facet of the almost cartoonish persona he cultivated, not unlike the ambulance-chasing lawyers whose commercials populate late-night television. Bald-headed and always sporting a deep tan suggestive of a recent tropical vacation, Mr. Mint occupied prime real estate in every hobby publication and convention of the era, fanning dozens of hundred dollar bills like playing cards while he beamed a thousand-watt smile as if he had just found that stack of cash on the street.
Some folks loved his schtick while others recoiled at his shameless self-promotion, but even his detractors couldn't deny that the man got the quality product. In any major card deal prior to the rise and ultimate hobby domination of the major auction houses, Mr. Mint was the man to beat. As Dizzy Dean famously insisted, "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up."
But in the thousands of deals struck by this Mount Rushmore figure of the sports collectibles hobby, one towers above all others. It began with a telephone call from a gentleman in suburban Boston claiming to possess a large collection of 1952 Topps high numbers. And they're in Mint condition, by the way. Sure you do, Rosen thought. And you've unearthed a complete T-Rex skeleton while digging your new swimming pool.
But this was the mid-1980's--the pre-Internet age. There was no way to verify remotely and the man sounded too serious to be ignored. His father, he maintained, had been a delivery driver for the botched distribution of Topps' 1952 issue and a case of unused product had been sitting in the basement for over thirty years. So Rosen set off for the man's home, and the legitimate miracle that resided within. He recounts the tale in a video posted at our online listing.
"He put this big tray of cards on the table...and he says, 'They're in numerical order, don't worry.' So I went 268, 285, I got to 306. So I took 306 off the top, 308, 309, and there it was: 311. I lay it face down now. I took 311. I took a stack--still more 311's. Took a stack, still more. Took another stack and finally got to the end. Seventy-five '52 Mantles. Mint."
Say the words "The Rosen Find" to any veteran collector and he or she will know the story well, the hobby equivalent of "The Shot Heard 'round the World," the ultimate, improbable glory. Rosen sold the historic find almost instantly, with this card changing hands for $1,000. Rosen then bought it back six years later in 1991 for $40,000, and quickly "flipped" it again. On July 2nd of that year, The New York Post trumpeted the outrageous transaction: "Mantle rookie card sold for record 50G." The site? The Madison Square Garden sports collectibles convention. The buyer? Anonymous.
But now, thirty-one years later, that card and that man have reappeared, ready to once again make sports collectibles history and reclaim the record for the highest price ever paid for an article of sports memorabilia when Heritage Auctions drops the hammer on the evening of August 27 in this greatest edition of our Platinum Night event. The owner's name is Anthony Giordano, the man to whom Mr. Mint inscribed a copy of his seminal hobby guide, "Mr. Mint's Insider's Guide to Investing in Baseball Cards and Collectibles," with the words, "To Tony & Ralph [Tony's son], Nice meeting you at M.S.G. Thanks for your purchase of the 52 Mantle. It's the best in the world. Your Pal, Alan Rosen, Mr. Mint."
A typed and signed letter from Rosen echoes that sentiment and closes with a request to assist with the sale of the card should Mr. Giordano ever decide to part with it. But it's been more than five years since Mr. Mint passed away at age seventy. If there's an afterlife that provides a window upon the living world, there's no doubt that Rosen is watching, flashing the cover of his book about investing in baseball cards to his fellow spirits and demanding that they give him the credit he's due.
So we'll say it here. Mr. Mint, you were right. Everything that you claimed about the future of the hobby and the solitary supremacy of this particular card was absolutely correct. To those who accurately report that there are three PSA Gem Mint 10 examples of this card, we can only ask you to bring them out and put them side-by-side with this SGC Mint+ 9.5 and its "1985 Rosen Find - Finest Known Example" header. It's a Pepsi Challenge that we believe this sublime representation would win. Grading standards have changed over the decades, and if you were to crack all of the population-toppers from their respective slabs and judge each card against one another in its raw state, we suspect you'd agree that Rosen's bold declaration is validated.
Frankly, we'd take it a step further, and proclaim that this trading card represents the quintessence of every metric that has historically been used to measure value in the collectibles marketplace. This is real rarity, not a machine-stamped "One of One" on a card printed last year. This is real significance--the cross-section of a defining moment in trading card and baseball history. This is the finest example thereof. This is a spectacular long-shot miracle of the collectible marketplace, deserving of its inevitable return to global headlines and that same question that haunts all record auction sales, spoken in all the languages of the world.
And now you have the answer.
Guide Value or Estimate: $10,000,000 - up.