Conundrum Looming

[jchcollins]

Dave, Bluejacket66 on YouTube and Stone Pony I believe here (Hi Dave, if you read...) is a Mantle collector and I know has said on YouTube there are certain cards he has not bought yet simply because he doesn't like the card and doesn't want to pay up for one ('55 Bowman, and '62 Topps, I believe).

The point being there is no right or wrong way to collect. You can consider your sets complete without him, or with a reprint, or with a beater version of the card.

Interesting discussion on collecting vs. being a fan. I'm a Cubs fan for 30+ years, so naturally I hate the St. Louis Cardinals. But I have found this is mostly only when I watch tv, not when I'm going over my collection. I started collecting cards as a kid before I became a Cubs fan, so in some strange way my hatred of the present day Cardinals does not affect how I feel about Stan Musial or Bob Gibson cards.

Is Mantle overrated / are his cards overpriced? Yes and no. People who don't understand the Mantle mystique by now likely never will. With the cards - in short, he was at the perfect apex of hobby and time. The baby boomers who took the card hobby from a geeky, hotel show underground thing in the 1970's to a mainstream, card shop-on-every-corner thing in the 1980's had one main baseball hero in common, and that was Mickey Mantle. So that is why him and his cards in comparison to others had a boom and a subsequent unique following ever since the early 1980's. Yes, there were better players, but Mantle had a mystique about him and New York and the 1950's that nobody else from that era really hit just right on the head like that.

[uyu906]

Hi John,

Thanks for your post. To play devil's advocate - If what you said about the Boomers creating the Mantle price premium is accurate (and I believe there is a lot of merit in what you said); what happens after all of the Baby Boom collectors pass on to the Great Ballpark in the Sky? Do Mantle prices go down and revert to prices equivalent to stars like Mays and Aaron? Or, do they stay at the same high levels due to the price premium becoming ingrained in the Hobby for 50 odd years??

Rich

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Dave, Bluejacket66 on YouTube and Stone Pony I believe here (Hi Dave, if you read...) is a Mantle collector and I know has said on YouTube there are certain cards he has not bought yet simply because he doesn't like the card and doesn't want to pay up for one ('55 Bowman, and '62 Topps, I believe).

The point being there is no right or wrong way to collect. You can consider your sets complete without him, or with a reprint, or with a beater version of the card.

Interesting discussion on collecting vs. being a fan. I'm a Cubs fan for 30+ years, so naturally I hate the St. Louis Cardinals. But I have found this is mostly only when I watch tv, not when I'm going over my collection. I started collecting cards as a kid before I became a Cubs fan, so in some strange way my hatred of the present day Cardinals does not affect how I feel about Stan Musial or Bob Gibson cards.

Is Mantle overrated / are his cards overpriced? Yes and no. People who don't understand the Mantle mystique by now likely never will. With the cards - in short, he was at the perfect apex of hobby and time. The baby boomers who took the card hobby from a geeky, hotel show underground thing in the 1970's to a mainstream, card shop-on-every-corner thing in the 1980's had one main baseball hero in common, and that was Mickey Mantle. So that is why him and his cards in comparison to others had a boom and a subsequent unique following ever since the early 1980's. Yes, there were better players, but Mantle had a mystique about him and New York and the 1950's that nobody else from that era really hit just right on the head like that.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by uyu906

Hi John,

Thanks for your post. To play devil's advocate - If what you said about the Boomers creating the Mantle price premium is accurate (and I believe there is a lot of merit in what you said); what happens after all of the Baby Boom collectors pass on to the Great Ballpark in the Sky? Do Mantle prices go down and revert to prices equivalent to stars like Mays and Aaron? Or, do they stay at the same high levels due to the price premium becoming ingrained in the Hobby for 50 odd years??

Rich

No. Once you are in the stratosphere I think you stay there. Have Ruth or DiMaggio prices gone down...ever? And in fairness even as Yankees, they don't have the same wide appeal that Mantle does. Mantle fans who saw him play passed down that love to their kids, many of whom collected in the 80's. I just don't see the hobby attitude around him ever changing substantially. My LCS dealer always keeps lower grade Mantle cards in the case just because fans who are not even really collectors come in, and he can always move them. People want to be able to say they own a Mantle card, even if it's beat up. The days of collectors who actually saw him play will end, of course, but I think that mystique is transferable. None of the marquee vintage players - Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mays, Williams, Aaron, Clemente, Koufax, etc. etc., et al. have ever really seen their card values go down, in the last 4 decades of this hobby anyway. The time may come where no collector who saw any of the dead guys play knows any better - but I believe he will still be regarded as special.

[steve B]

I've expressed this before, what makes a top collectible in any field isn't any of the things that are usually thought of, at least not on their own.

This hobby has a number of great examples, the 52 Mantle being one of them.
Is it "rare"? Not exactly. It's a double print, so as part of the 52 high numbers it's one of the three most common.
So why don't any of the other 52 high numbers even get close?

It's got all the other factors.

It's not common, but also not so rare that someone who wants one can't find one.
The subject is very popular.
There's even a great story, that the 52 high numbers are "rare" because the remainders were dumped in the harbor/river/ocean

And that really all it takes.
It doesn't hurt that the set it's from is a great looking set.
Or that his popularity is in NY, one of the larger cities.

It shares those things with some of the other very expensive collectibles at the top of their respective hobbies.
The Wagner T206 of course
The inverted "Jenny" airmail stamp
The "CIA invert stamp -- although less so, because it's newer and not a particularly good looking stamp.
The 1804 Silver dollar
And maybe the 1913 liberty nickel (although it IS rare, it also has the great story/mystery)

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by steve B

There's even a great story, that the 52 high numbers are "rare" because the remainders were dumped in the harbor/river/ocean

I would agree it's a great story, but it's dubious at best. There are Topps employees who said they never heard tell of that from Mr. Berger until he was a much older man, and even then it was a wildly inconsistent story when he told it. Supposedly someone went to the trouble to track down a few other Topps employees who had been there when the event was supposed to have happened (1960 or so) - and none of them remembered anything like that at all.

I suppose we'll never know for sure - which of course makes the story attractive because it was possible - just adding to the mystique of the '52 Mantle.

[vintagebaseballcardguy]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

I would agree it's a great story, but it's dubious at best. There are Topps employees who said they never heard tell of that from Mr. Berger until he was a much older man, and even then it was a wildly inconsistent story when he told it. Supposedly someone went to the trouble to track down a few other Topps employees who had been there when the event was supposed to have happened (1960 or so) - and none of them remembered anything like that at all.

I suppose we'll never know for sure - which of course makes the story attractive because it was possible - just adding to the mystique of the '52 Mantle.

Wouldn't it be great if they found a bunch of '52 highs just sitting in a warehouse somewhere? Release those babies, flood the market, and drive down the price so that people like me can afford one! Of course those who have forked over big money for #311 wouldn't be too happy about that, and I couldn't blame them.

[Volod]

Originally Posted by vintagebaseballcardguy

Wouldn't it be great if they found a bunch of '52 highs just sitting in a warehouse somewhere? Release those babies, flood the market, and drive down the price so that people like me can afford one! Of course those who have forked over big money for #311 wouldn't be too happy about that, and I couldn't blame them.

Hmmm, a warehouse that no one had thought to enter in sixty years - I wish there were one of those in my neighborhood. Even if such a thing could happen, how many new cases of high numbers would be required to drop the asking price of those cards? The only such find that comes to mind is the hoard of Topps Red Backs that someone uncovered back in the '80's, and I don't recall that the market value of that issue was much affected by it, perhaps because there wasn't much anyway. But, who knows - maybe that incident was in the news when Berger sat for the interview in which he made the notorious claim and it inspired him to spin an imaginative tale.

[mrmopar]

I would add to that the fact that I suspect a lot of people just want one to be able to say they own one. Pure demand with no reason other than the desire to own one because it is THE THING to do. Maybe it is someone scraping enough together to afford their top card or someone who has money to burn and realizes that people will drool all over a nice copy if they buy one.

For exactly those couple of reasons you state that the card should NOT be that much more valuable, or at least the other 52 High numbers should be worth more than they are, proves this to me. The demand for the card, regardless of what the price rises to is never satisfied by the supply so the price continues to rise and rise, yet so many other cards are harder to find and cost considerably less. The Pafko is another example of a card being "worth" way more than it should be worth.

.

Originally Posted by steve B

I've expressed this before, what makes a top collectible in any field isn't any of the things that are usually thought of, at least not on their own.

This hobby has a number of great examples, the 52 Mantle being one of them.
Is it "rare"? Not exactly. It's a double print, so as part of the 52 high numbers it's one of the three most common.
So why don't any of the other 52 high numbers even get close?

It's got all the other factors.

It's not common, but also not so rare that someone who wants one can't find one.
The subject is very popular.
There's even a great story, that the 52 high numbers are "rare" because the remainders were dumped in the harbor/river/ocean

And that really all it takes.
It doesn't hurt that the set it's from is a great looking set.
Or that his popularity is in NY, one of the larger cities.

It shares those things with some of the other very expensive collectibles at the top of their respective hobbies.
The Wagner T206 of course
The inverted "Jenny" airmail stamp
The "CIA invert stamp -- although less so, because it's newer and not a particularly good looking stamp.
The 1804 Silver dollar
And maybe the 1913 liberty nickel (although it IS rare, it also has the great story/mystery)

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by mrmopar

The Pafko is another example of a card being "worth" way more than it should be worth.

Agreed. I've always thought that card was way over-hyped. The rarity in it being #1 is totally related to condition, but should have nothing to do with the card's production. It's not a scarce high number. I'm ok with truly great condition, NM Pafko's going for a premium, but there isn't really anything special about G and VG copies.

[Bigdaddy]

Not saying that this is your guy, but here's an example of a card that might fit the bill to fill that hole in your set. It's been hanging around the 'bay for quite some time and has grown a 'rona beard while looking for a home. Personally, I think the card is still waaayyy overpriced.