My Most Expensive Piece of Cardboard

Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle

5 min readJul 17, 2018

As you probably know by now, I have been obsessed with baseball from a very young age. When I was a teenager, I worked at a local diner and about 80% of the money I made there went straight into buying baseball equipment and memorabilia. As I got older, I started to save my money and I would save just enough so that I could buy pieces other than just cards. Collecting baseball cards with my grandfather when I was eight years old was just the start.

Baseball cards turned into game used jerseys and bats, World Series rings, autographed memorabilia, Baseball Treasure coins, and more. I made my parent’s attic into a museum full all of my baseball collectibles. I stored it, protected it, and displayed it up there where it all stayed until recently when I moved everything out of their house and into my own.

In between treasure hunting adventures, I decided to look up what was happening in the world of the hobby. As it just so happened, one of the cards I had on my bucket list ever since I was a teenager was on the market. The card was a PSA 10 Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle and the seller was advertising that, for the right price, he was up to selling the iconic card.

Lucky for me, my most recent adventure had been a huge success and had left me with some spending money to devote towards any bucket list items that I wanted. I had alway thought that owning this extremely rare card would be all but impossible. However, circumstances had changed and I decided that I would do whatever I could to get my hands on it.

It took me two days of negotiations and more money that I ever thought I would spend on a baseball card, but I finally had it. With this purchase, I full filled one of my childhood dreams and ended up with one of the most valuable baseball cards in circulation.

Even as a die hard Red Sox fan, I had a ton of respect for Mantle. He was endlessly fascinating and talented. Throughout his career, his ability to fight through injuries, pain, and setbacks made him an inspiration to many, including myself. As a kid, my father would tell me stories about Mantle’s outrageous hitting abilities. How I see it, he was truly one of the most transcendent talents Major League Baseball has ever seen.

Once I learned that Mantle’s father was the one who taught him how to switch hit, I made my father try and teach me. Before I tried it, I though that it wouldn’t be that hard but I was sorely mistaken.

Mantle on the cover of Sports Illustrated

Like Mantle, I was a natural righty. My father was a natural lefty and I thought that the easiest way to learn how to switch hit was to emulate his swing. We practiced this for about a half an hour and I though I got a pretty good hang of it. I lined up in a lefty batting stance and my father released the ball. I timed my swing as I had done over a thousand times from the right side of the plate. I loaded and swung in this unnatural motion. I thought I was going to see the ball connect with the bat and hear the satisfying sound of a well struck ball.

What really happened was I took my head off the ball and lost my balance so badly I spun around 180 degrees. Instead of hearing the ball hit the bat, I heard it hit the fence behind me. When my father tells this story he likes to add that the ball was 6 inches above my bat. This experiment ended all thoughts I had that I would become the next switch hitting phenom in baseball. I went to bed that night with even more respect for Mantle. I couldn’t believe that people could switch hit at all, let alone as well as he could.

Not only was Mantle the best switch hitter in the history of baseball, he was also one of the most powerful. His home runs landed outside of ballparks and its estimated that he hit the furthest home run in the history of baseball. He didn’t just hit the ball hard, he hit it often, and by the end of his career he amassed 536 home runs with a career high of 54 home runs in a single season. Some speculate that the furthest home run he ever hit went 565 feet.

I didn’t get to grow up watching Mantle play, but my father and grandfather both got to see him the peak of his career. They said that you could feel the energy all throughout the stadium when he played. Every single time he stepped into the batter’s box, he commanded the park. I could never decide what I thought was most impressive about Mantle’s career, 20 All — Star Game appearances, 7 World Series championships, 4x American League home run leader, or the 3x American League MVPs. Needless to say, he was tremendous baseball player, and depending on who you ask, he is the greatest baseball player who ever lived.

When I was finally able to acquire this card it really felt like I had struck gold. I remember the first time I picked it up I was in disbelief. I felt butterflies in my stomach, the same kind I felt when hunting treasure all over the world, and the same kind I fell when I open a pack of Baseball Treasure coins. This feeling of excitement, anticipation, nervousness is something that I crave. Its my favorite feeling in the world; the thrill of the chase, and the reward of finally getting what you sought.

For more information on how to #JoinTheHunt visit the Baseball Treasure website!