When it comes to Mantle, is it better...

[JollyElm]

The 'problem' with Mickey Mantle overall is his stature within the collecting world and his eminence in the non-baseball community as a whole. He simply exists in his own universe. The point being, no matter what card you look for (say, on ebay), it's going to be way overpriced (as compared to other HOF'ers from his era). You have to dig, dig, dig to find anything priced even nearly 'accurately.' (I'm sure with lower conditioned cards, it's not as ridiculous, but still.) So, you have to add that reality to the equation, and it becomes, "Do you want to overpay for quantity or do you want to severely overpay for quality?"

[jb67]

For me when collecting Mick I go with the lower grade cards that I enjoy looking at on a regular basis. Having said that I do collect high grade cards of Johnny Bench.

I think you have to go with what you will enjoy looking at on a regular basis. For me I would rather look at many lower grade Micks instead of 1 or 2 high grade Micks. Here is a sampling of some of my low grade cards that I thoroughly enjoy looking at on a regular basis.