Thursday, April 22, 2021

hey mickey

i don't remember if it was a seller at a card show, a fellow blogger, or someone else who said it, but many years ago, when the only mickey mantle cards i owned were from the 1970's and/or later, i was told "everyone should have a mantle from his playing days". since that time, i have purchased both of his cards in the 1965 topps set (and i even had a third version that was graded as psa 4 which i sold last summer), plus his final tribute from the 1969 topps release, but i didn't have one from the 1950's until a month or two ago.

i've said it  a few times over the last year - now is not the right time to be building a vintage set - but i am choosing to persevere. 
i added a 1957 topps mickey mantle card to the set build and my collection.

i've been watching auctions for this card for almost a year. initially i was certain that i wanted a psa graded version, but softened that stance around the new year. i started looking for a reasonably centered card with the right kind of love, and i think i found it here. there is surface wear and there are wrinkles; there is corner wear - but not deliberate or conspicuously even corner wear - and the slight paper loss exposes nothing but vintage card stock underneath. 

here's the back, by the way:
the card mentions the triple crown without saying "triple crown", and we are treated to his incredible 1956 stats on the last line. plus, there's a brooklyn dodger angle to the cartoon trivia question to boot. i am pretty happy to have this card, even though it means that i now turn my full attention to the rookie card of brooks robinson.

one thing that i noticed while i was looking at '57 mantles almost every day for a year, is that the topps artists airbrushed someone out of the background. you can see it on this cleaner copy of the card:
there behind the end of the bat is someone trying to get off of the field. i've tried to isolate it here:
maybe it's the ghost of the babe. whomever it is, it is interesting to me that they were "removed" from the image rather than just left alone.

i should mention that one of the other reasons that i went with the card that i did (here it is again)
is that it was part of a personal mantle collection being sold by a longtime collector. as such, i added a second card from that collection to my purchase, this 1961 topps baseball thrills card:
i don't know if it's true or not, but 565 was a number that i learned pretty early on in my baseball fandom. here's the story:
i have three or four of the baseball thrills cards from this set, and i've toyed with the idea of completing the subset for quite a while. maybe i will and maybe i won't, but it's nice to have this card either way.

when i was maybe 12 or 13, the idea of owning a 1972 topps steve garvey card seemed like a pipe dream. for one, cards were much more scarce back then before the internet opened up a wider marketplace. the other thing was the price and i didn't see how i would ever pony up $40 or whatever for the card. i remember telling my brother that "it's just a piece of cardboard". as my collecting continued and matured, certainly this mantle card became something like the 1972 topps garvey on a grander scale. except it's not just a piece of cardboard, it's a '57 mantle.

18 comments:

  1. Can't really go wrong with a playing era Mickey Mantle.

    I have read that it is highly unlikely the length of the homer was 565 ft. I believe that the guy figuring out the distance also counted some steps sideways, so oh well. It's a good story anyhow.

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    1. i tend to believe that 565 included bounces and rolling and who knows what else. if today's players can't hit one that far, i doubt mickey did.

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  2. Congrats on the '57 Mantle! Definitely a beauty. It's really crazy how expensive his vintage can get - even beat-up copies tend to be way out of my price range.

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    1. i am operating at a loss, but i've sold a bunch of stuff to feed my collection pickups over the last couple of years. it certainly helps me feel better about laying out the cash for cards like these in times like this.

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  3. The 1957 Mantle is probably my favorite of his cards, just looks like (someone else's) nostalgic summer day going to a baseball game. The whole '57 set feels that way since it's first Topps set to just feature players on the field of play without a solid color background and/or giant floating head. Green grass, what a concept!

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    1. i agree, brian. i can see the pitch in topps' hq: what if we used actual photographs of players in their stadiums, with their equipment!

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  4. I never owned a playing days Mantle, nor had the desire to own one, until purchasing the one for my '56 set last month and then completing the set. It's pretty weird that all this happened when card prices were insane.

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    1. the baseball thrills is the first one i've added that won't go to a set build, although it is likely part of a subset build.

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  5. Congratulations on picking up that Mantle. Don't think I've ever taken the time to look at that card and appreciate it, but I like the photograph Topps used.

    Side note... I had a different point of view when I was 12. I kept thinking... I can't wait to get a real job, so I can start buying nice cards for my collection.

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    1. it certainly looks like your way of thinking has paid off!

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  6. Love that Baseball Thrills card. It's one of the few playing days Mantles that I own.

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    1. it's a well executed card all around. i'm happy to finally have it in my collection!

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  7. I guess it's because I've always seen poor copies online, but I never knew of the "secret" person in the background. It's unfortunate though, that at this point, we'll probably never learn the story behind it.

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