1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 PSA NM 7....

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Sold on Feb 22, 2020 for:

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The most essential post-war trading card...

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 PSA NM 7. If we had a dime for every "Baby Boomer" we've met who's claimed to have owned a Topps Mantle rookie as a child, we'd be able to afford this one with plenty of money to spare! The most important, valuable and recognizable gum card of the post-war era has ingrained itself in our American iconography in such a way that most of us could sketch the card from memory, the Mick posed in a right-handed batting stance, his eyes drifting up to the grandstand behind him. But in spite of all those who owned one, or only dreamed that they did, the examples that have indeed survived in such magical condition as the presented copy are, in fact, unquestionably scarce.

At 407 cards in scope, the 1952 Topps set was the largest of its day, both in number of cards and the dimensions of each one, specifically. Ultimately, though, these excesses turned against Topps Company management, who realized late in the 1952 season that the "High Number" cards (#'s 311-407) would never reach their channels of distribution in time for the close of the baseball season. Limited quantities were trucked to stores in the northeastern United States and in Canada, but the final solution for a warehouse filled with unsold cards is said to have been a boat trip several miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, and ignominious burial at sea.

Spared that watery fate, the offered representation approaches its seventieth birthday looking just as young as the Commerce Kid it pictures, providing bold colors, sharp registration and corners and clean surfaces. A real beauty.

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