original back, my arse

i've seen maybe 3 or 4 authentic 1952 topps mickey mantle cards in person during my lifetime. most have been at card shows in southern california, but one was at the smithsonian museum in washington dc. that was back around 2006 or so when the american history museum was being renovated and a bunch of stuff from that building was in the air & space museum. 

i will never own a 1952 topps mantle (unless i find $12.6 million somehow), so i figured i should add a reprint to my collection as it is one of the most iconic cards there is.  that is how i wound up purchasing this card

at the monthly twin cities card show back in august.  it's a 2010 topps cards your mother threw out original back reprint/insert/parallel.  here's the back:

it cost me $4, but even so i was a bit annoyed when i got home and noticed damage to the bottom edge of the card (right edge in the above image). annoyed in the sense that i wish i had pointed it out to get the price down - i was still happy to have the card and check one off the mental want list for my "meaningful and just because" mini-collection.

then i actually looked at the back, and was more than annoyed - this time with topps.  read through the text on the back with me:

"switch hitting mickley...."  mickley?! why have i never heard about his name being misspelled on the back of the most iconic postwar card?! 

let's keep going.  "...is heralded as joe dimaggio's successor. he alternated between the yankees and kansas city during '51 - batting in 50 runs in 1 month for the american independance, batting .313 in 89 games."  i know baseball was played during the civil war, but it wasn't around for the revolutionary war. besides, that's not how independence is spelled and the sentence runs on in a very strange way.  at this point i went looking for an actual image of the 1952 card back.  here it is:

first of all - no "mickley". second, he drove in those 50 runs for the "american association club". and "at 17, mickey broke in as shortstop for independence, batting .313 in 89 games." that makes way more sense.  topps essentially skipped a line of text on a recreation of their most famous card. but wait - there's more! in 2010, topps said that "the yanks brought him up from joplin after he hit 25 hr's and led the league with a .282 batting average in 1950".  a coherent sentence except that the real card notes that his batting average was .383 for joplin in 1950 - a stat that is matched by baseball reference.  another minor note, they left off the double asterisk that clarifies his "lifetime" stats to be his minor league totals to date, but i am more appalled by the text errors.

i suppose i shouldn't be surprised, but this is pretty bad even for topps.  keep in mind that they had been reprinting mantle's card since the 1980's.  here's the back of the 1996 topps mickey mantle commemorative reprint insert set's version of the 1952 card:

looks good!

here's the back of a version that was released last year as part of something called 2021 topps x mickey mantle collection (according to comc)

aside from inexplicably misspelling "heralded" in the first sentence, it's a match. and, it's a big step forward from what they put out there in 2010.

i mentioned they had reprinted this card in the 1980's. that would have been as part of the 1983 topps 1952 reprint series. that was the card i decided to target for my collection once i saw how poorly the 2010 card recreated the original, and here it is:

with the back:

the only nit i can pick with this is the lack of a period after his eye color. however, i am suspicious that i have a reprint of a reprint. something feels a bit off with this card but i don't have any others to compare it to. no matter - it serves its purpose in my collection and i am ok with whatever it is because it is as close to the original as topps has been.

i also added a non-topps mantle card to my collection - this 1989 cmc card

fits nicely in my 'name/number on the back" mini-collection. it's good to have number 7 represented!