December Pick ups

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Great analysis of the 57 Mick, and jives with my experience as well. As someone who's been collecting pretty much only Mantle basic cards for a year now, I'm continually amazed by how his cards across the board are so often poorly centered...

Thanks. Equally good analysis of the run as a whole being difficult, with each set and card having its own particular quirks and idiosyncrasies. My centering score (though I didn't know it at the time; I didn't care about centering as a kid...) was the '56 Mantle gray back I picked-up and have had since I was about 14 years old (about 1990). It's only about a VG-ish card (corner wear, including some paper loss) - but besides being about 0.00002% diamond cut left to right if you look very closely - it is centered perfectly. It is a good example of a mid-grade card that retains a ton of eye appeal because even though it certainly has it's fair share of issues from the technical grading perspective - the color remains bright and that 50/50 centering all the way around just really sets it off. The one Mantle I have held onto since I was a kid because of what it means to me...