Here’s a great piece of hobby writing from the May 1998 issue of Sports Cards Magazine. In “The Mick,” Marty Appel made the case that Mickey Mantle had essentially saved or ignited the baseball card hobby three different times.
The first came in the 1950s, when kids chased Mantle cards out of packs. The second arrived around 1980, when three mint Mantle cards reportedly sold for the then-staggering price of $3,000 each, generating national publicity and helping fuel the emerging vintage-card market. And the third came after Mantle’s death in 1995, when Topps inserted gold-stamped reprints of his original cards into 1996 Topps Baseball, bringing nostalgic collectors, and their kids, back to Mantle once again.
Nearly three decades after Appel wrote the article, that last line of his argument might be the most remarkable: “Mickey was again the card to chase.” In many ways, he still is. Mantle remains one of the central figures in vintage-card collecting, with the 1952 Topps #311 in particular continuing to occupy an extraordinary place in the hobby.
The feature also had a sort of companion piece, Mike Breeden’s “King of Autographs,” about Mantle’s enormous impact on the card-show autograph market. I’m including that page, too, also because of the run of Mantle cards pictured along the bottom.
Happy collecting!
P.S. Want yor own copy of these articles for your own hobby library? Click here to find the May 1998 issue of Sports Cards Magazine on eBay.
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