This Baseball Card Just Sold for an Insane Amount of Money
A Mickey Mantle card from 1952 becomes the most valuable in history.
Oh, Mickey, you’re so fine.
A Mickey Mantle baseball card from 1952 just sold at an auction for $12,600,000, making it the most valuable piece of sports memorabilia in the world.
A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card called “the finest known example in the world” was sold this morning by Heritage Auctions for the record-setting price of $12.6 million. My bid came up just short.
— Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch)
The previous record was held by Diego Maradona’s Hand of God jersey from the 1986 World Cup, which a Russian oligarch purchased for a cool $9.3 million. Honus Wagner’s baseball card fetched $6.6 million last year, but Mantle’s rookie card almost doubled that impressive figure.
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“An eight-figure auction result in the sports market was the stuff of fantasy just a decade ago,” says Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions at Heritage in Dallas.
But that fantasy became a reality over the weekend. Why the recent surge? For starters, the Mickey Mantle card is in impeccable condition — it was graded Mint+ 9.5. by Sportscard Guaranty Corporation. But experts say there’s also been a rise in investors shelling out big bucks for nostalgia.
“All of a sudden, people are like, ‘Wow, this stuff could be art,'” says Michael Osacky, the lead appraiser for Professional Sports Authenticator, .
Might be time to pull that old shoe box of collectibles out of the closet.
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Oh, Mickey, you’re so fine.
A Mickey Mantle baseball card from 1952 just sold at an auction for $12,600,000, making it the most valuable piece of sports memorabilia in the world.
A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card called “the finest known example in the world” was sold this morning by Heritage Auctions for the record-setting price of $12.6 million. My bid came up just short.
— Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch)
The previous record was held by Diego Maradona’s Hand of God jersey from the 1986 World Cup, which a Russian oligarch purchased for a cool $9.3 million. Honus Wagner’s baseball card fetched $6.6 million last year, but Mantle’s rookie card almost doubled that impressive figure.
