Wow Rare Air 52 Mantle SGC 5 REA

[Snowman]

I'm one of those hyper OCD folks that Peter describes above as being someone who can spot a 51/49 centering "issue" at a quick glance. My eyes ALWAYS go to the borders first. I don't even notice the image or the player at all until after I've assessed the centering. If the card passes my centering test, only then will I move on to the image and condition. It's just how I'm wired. I've also made friends with other collectors who approach their collections the same way. I think it's difficult for those of you who aren't OCD about centering to see valuations from our perspective in the same way that we have a difficult time understanding why others would want to pay $$$ more for nicer corners. Cards that are well centered just have an entirely different pricing structure (especially in vintage). Obviously, we all know that to some degree, or as a basic principle, but when I read through these sorts of threads, I often find myself surprised by the non-centering OCD collectors.

When I saw this 52 Topps Mantle SGC 5 in REA, I said, "there's no way it sells for less than $250k". You just can't look at other 5s and think, "maybe 150k plus a bump for the centering?". That approach will always leave you well short of the hammer price for a high-end card with good eye appeal and low pop counts. Everyone around here says that the 52 Topps Mantle is not a low pop count card. Sure, that may be true if eye-appeal doesn't matter, but for a collector like myself, or MattyC, all those other off-centered or tilted, or diamond cut cards might as well not even exist. We have zero interest in those cards in any grade.

For the OCD crew, centering isn't just a question of whether the image is in the middle of the frame. It also matters HEAVILY whether or not that image is tilted. I will reject an otherwise dead-centered card with even a 2-degree tilt or diamond cut every time. I just have no interest in it. It's also why I roll my eyes whenever I see Ken Kendrick's PSA "10" Mantle (it has a significant tilt to it). And when it comes to centering shift, left to right matters more than top to bottom to us OCD people. That's why this SGC 5 Mantle sold at such a premium. The Left to Right is 50/50 and the T/B is 58/42.

If you want to have your mind really blown, wait until a truly dead-centered 50/50 both ways Mantle surfaces in a 5 holder from PSA or SGC. I'd wager good money that it eclipses $500k at auction. But it could be years before one surfaces (or decades). There just aren't enough of them out there. I would estimate that there are fewer than 20 truly dead-centered crease-free 52T Mantles in existence. I'm not just pulling that number out of thin air either. I did a deep dive into the data on the 52 Topps Jackie Robinson a few months back when a dead-centered PSA 4 hit the market. It's my favorite card. I literally went through every single 52 Topps Jackie Robinson on VCP that has ever sold and tallied up how many of them were crease-free VG-EX or better with perfect 50/50 centering and how many were close (50/50 one way and ~47/53 or better the other). Out of ~1,000 total transactions with images, only 9 (yes, NINE) were perfectly centered, with another 22 that were close. To someone like me, that means this 52 Topps Jackie Robinson is really a pop 31 card, only 9 of which I truly want. The premium I'm willing to pay for a dead-centered copy would blow your mind.

I ended up winning the auction for that 52 Jackie for less than half my max bid. The hammer price was $20.4k. It's a PSA 4 (shown below along with my Minoso RC - which I also paid a premium for). I got extremely lucky in that auction. That Jackie sells for $40k+ if the right buyers had seen it (I'm one of them). But an average 52 Topps Jackie in a PSA 4 sells for ~$15k.

I think the best analogy I can give in terms of figuring out what these centered key cards are likely worth to someone like me is actually with ultra-modern cards. You have all these thousands and thousands of copies of a Luka Doncic RC or Acuna, Soto, whoever. But those Gold Parallels that are serial numbered /10 sell for HUGE HUGE multiples of what a regular base card or "silver" parallel sells for. Centered cards are to vintage what Gold parallels are to ultra-modern. It's not just a small bump that some people are willing to pay (though it does manifest itself like that for some cards with less demand). With key cards, the sky is the limit. Especially when there are only a dozen or so in existence.


Here's my Jackie. And no, I wouldn't trade it for your 55/45 PSA 8.

Note - the tilt on the top is just how this card's image is shaped. This is what a perfectly centered 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson Type 1 looks like (there is a Typ1 1 and a Type 2 Jackie just like there is with Mantle, in case you were unaware).