1969 Topps Mickey Mantle (Last Name In White) #500 PSA Mint 9....

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Population four, only one superior!

1969 Topps Mickey Mantle (Last Name In White) #500 PSA Mint 9. Just twenty-three subjects from the 1969 Topps baseball issue carry this pale badge of honor, and the debate still rages as to whether this diversion from the standard yellow utilized for player names throughout the balance of the production run was intentional or the result of a printing error. All such "Last Name in White" variants derive from the fifth of the seven series produced that year, with Mantle far and away the most important and coveted of not just that series, but the entirety of the set.

It was already a bit of an oddity to find the card within this Major League centennial issue because the Mick hung up his spikes after the 1968 season, but that announcement wasn't made until March 1, 1969, at which point the Topps designers had already assigned Mantle a position. The result is a card that contains the full stat line for one of the greatest players of the post-war era.

This "Last Name in White" Mantle variant is over eight times as rare as the standard yellow, and that gulf widens to sixteen-to-one at the PSA Mint 9 level. The issue is particularly challenging at elite grade levels like this one due to the common problems of print roller marks and paper loss on verso, factors that conspire to make this last "standard issue" Topps Mantle card even tougher than the legendary first. This is our first offering of the White Letter variant, and it's the rarest Mantle card of any issue at this elite grade.

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