Mantle cards as investments

[Cooptown]

You Should’ve Kept Your Mickey Mantle Cards

How one Topps 1952 baseball card became a better investment than gold, stocks and real estate


By Michael Salfino


In 1960, Topps Co. cleared space in its cramped Brooklyn warehouse by renting a barge, loading it with boxes of baseball cards that had sold poorly and dumping them in the Atlantic Ocean.

Nearly 60 years later, that renegade housecleaning maneuver has inadvertently created one of the hottest niche investments of the past decade: the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card.

The card, Mantle’s first for Topps, was number 311 in a series the company issued to retailers mostly candy stores late in the 1952 season, after the card market for that year had already petered out. The series was ignored by consumers and retailers returned them to the company by the caseload. The card’s designer, Sy Berger, several years later couldn’t sell these surplus cards, including the Mantle, for even 10 for a penny. So they were dumped.

“It took three garbage trucks - I would say 300 to 500 cases,” said Berger to Sports Collectors Digest before his 2014 death. “I found a friend of mine who had a garbage scow and we loaded the three trucks-worth on the barge. I was out there with it. Opposite Atlantic Highlands, a few miles out.”

With most of the ‘52 Mantle inventory condemned to the bottom of the ocean, the few that now circulate are the center of a boom market that still hasn’t peaked despite a huge spike in value over the past decade.

The card’s soaring value will get a big test next month in an online auction of a ‘52 Mantle, graded at 8.5 on a scale of 10. Some investors speculate that the price could reach $1 million or more by the time bidding ends November 17.

The card in investment grade condition is incredibly rare. According to Professional Sports Authenticator, only 44 of the 1952 Mantles exist in near-mint-to-mint or better condition. As a result, the value of the card graded an 8 has jumped from an average of $63,859 in 2006 to $494,000 today, according to VintageCardPrices.com, which establishes card value by tracking actual sale prices on eBay and at auctions.

That’s a 674% increase in 10 years, compared with gold (85.2%), New York City median housing prices (40%) and the S&P Index (58.5%) during the same period.

In a trading card market that has its ups and downs, Mantle cards are a shining bright spot and not just the rare 1952 card. Mantle’s other investment-grade condition cards issued by Topps, owned today by Michael Eisner’s Tornante Co., have increased 245% in the same period.

The 1956 Mantle (up 300%) is much more common but still prized because that was his Triple Crown year. The 1962 Mantle (316%) is his final MVP season and tough to get in investment-grade condition because of its design. The 1966 is up 211%, for no apparent reason other than aesthetics.

“Mantle’s Topps cards are the focal point of every advanced collector’s portfolio and it’s been that way for as long as the hobby has existed,” says Brian Drent, president of the Mile High Card Company, a Denver-based auction house for baseball cards and sports memorabilia. But prices weren’t tracked as carefully before 2006 as they have been since.

The Hall of Fame Yankee slugger, viewed by his fans during his playing days as a real-life Superman in baseball’s Metropolis, retired nearly 50 years ago. His on-field exploits aside, he has some advantages over others when it comes to long-term value.

“Yankees have always held a fascination with collectors. From [Babe] Ruth and [Lou] Gehrig on,” said collector Jim Elliott, a New Jersey-based music industry consultant and former radio personality in New York City and Washington, D.C. “The hold that Mantle had on people now in their 60s is amazing. People cried when he died” in 1995.

Yet his power as a collectible extends far beyond those old enough to have seen him play.

“The demographic sweet spot is 40 to 60 years old,” said Rob Rosen, vice president of Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, which is conducting next month’s auction. “These are collectors motivated more by a fascination with the history of the game than nostalgia for their own childhood experiences.”

Rosen says his clients view and display their Mantle cards like fine art. “And when my clients place iconic sports memorabilia like this even next to Picassos, men actually are far more impressed by the Mantle card.”

Matt Corin, a San Francisco-based card seller via his company, The Postgame Show, recounts a story from a baseball card convention two years ago when an “avid Mantle fan” told him he was cashing in his stock portfolio to buy the most highly prized Mantle card, the 1952 Topps. He was there with his wife “who did not seem nearly as enamored” with the iconic Yankees slugger. As she nervously looked on, he plunked down slightly over $200,000 for the piece of colored cardboard graded an 8. Today that same card would be expected to bring in about $500,000 at auction, according to VintageCardPrices sales data.

Next month’s auction will serve as the next marker for an investment that so far has only shot up.

“The last time an 8.5 sold was three years ago (for $275,000),” said Heritage’s Rosen. “Mantle cards are a piece of American iconography as well as one of the most reliable investments in the collectibles’ universe.”

Unfortunately, however, they are not waterproof.