USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Mickey Mantle baseball cards
If you have ever wondered how seriously rich people take tiny imperfections on old pieces of cardboard, a pair of Mickey Mantle cards just provided a $1.89 million answer. Two copies of the iconic 1952 Topps Mantle carried the exact same PSA 8 grade, yet one somehow sold for more than double the price of the other just two months later.
The newest example sold for $3.721 million at Heritage Auctions on Friday, while another PSA 8 1952 Mantle brought $1.83 million through Goldin in June. Same player. Same card. Same PSA grade. Roughly enough money between them to buy a very nice house and then several more houses.
The Same PSA Grade Apparently Does Not Mean The Same Thing
The $3.721 million card was technically graded PSA NM-MT 8, just like the June copy.
There was one extra sticker on the case.
Heritage’s auction listing identifies the card as MBA Silver, an additional eye-appeal designation from Mike Baker Authenticated that places it among the top 15% of examples carrying the same numerical grade.
There are 35 PSA 8 copies of the 1952 Topps Mantle.
That means the little Silver distinction effectively identifies this one as roughly a top-five PSA 8.
Apparently that is worth $1.891 million.
The difference sounds ridiculous until you understand how high-end card grading works. PSA gives both baseball cards an 8 because they satisfy the technical standards for the grade, but that does not mean they are visually identical. One can have better centering, stronger color, cleaner printing, or sharper overall eye appeal while still landing inside the same grading bucket.
At normal card-show prices, those differences might mean a few hundred bucks.
When the card is Mickey Mantle’s 1952 Topps No. 311, apparently they mean a beachfront property.
The June Card Was Not Exactly Ugly Either
The comparison gets even stranger because the cheaper card was hardly some beat-up PSA 8 barely hanging onto its grade.
Auction Report described it as a “pack-fresh” specimen and one of the finer known examples when it sold for $1.83 million on June 20.
That was already an enormous price.
Then 62 days later, another card with the same giant 8 printed on the holder sold for approximately 103% more.
The $3.721 million result also set a new public-auction high for a PSA 8 example, although it remains well short of the overall Mantle insanity. An SGC 9.5 copy of the same 1952 Topps card sold for $12.6 million in 2022.
Only 14 of the more than 2,000 copies PSA has evaluated have received a numerical grade higher than 8, which is why collectors are apparently willing to start dissecting the quality within the grade once they reach this level.
It is basically the sports-card version of two houses receiving the same appraisal and somebody paying an extra $1.9 million because one has slightly better natural light.
Except the house is 2½ by 3½ inches.
And Mickey Mantle is printed on it.