Mickey Mantle Rookie Card Sells For Big Bucks At Auction

[TJL]

BURR RIDGE, Ill. -- A suburban Chicago auction house reports that a baseball card from Mickey Mantle's 1951 rookie year with the New York Yankees has brought a record 160 thousand dollars for a veteran Evanston card collector.

Officials at Mastro Auctions in Burr Ridge say the nearly mint card fetched nearly three times what similar cards have brought in the past.

It was part of the collection of 89-year-old Lionel Carter of Evanston, who has been collecting baseball cards since he was 15. Carter is now breaking up his collection, and the first installlment, which included the Mantle card, generated about one-point-six million dollars.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press

Wow! This guy must have some collection. I bet he's glad his Mom never chucked his baseball cards.

[lilhave]

In 1951 Topps issued a 50 card set, which was unique that it had written double, single, out, strike, ball etc. on them and you played a game of baseball with your friend, turning over a card at a time.

In 1952 topps issued their first full series set, which consisted of 407 cards, at 6 cards and a stick of gum for a nickle. One card was no good as it adhered to the gum. Before that period of time Bowman was the sole distributor of baseball cards from about 1947 on.

Topps made on mistake issuing thier cards in two series, the first being 1-310 and they were issued in april. The second series was distributed at the beginning of September and were nos. 311-407. Came Sept. and all the kids were collecting football cards and could care less about baseball cards. Most cards from the second series were tossed by Topps and they lost money on them. The second series had many of the rookies, Mays and Mantle etc. Mantle was no. 311 and very few had them. I lived about 20 blocks from the Topps factory, which was in South Brooklyn. Could have bought the entire set for peanuts, I'm sure less then 15 bucks but that was no fun. I'm sure every kid in my neighborhood had the full set but we gave very little thought to it, and anyway at the time I was a Giant fan and hated the Yankees. Became a Yankee fan when my son was born and he started to root for the Yanks but still the greatest player I ever saw was Mays.

Yes, at the end of each season last years cards hit the garbage pail. They were old, past history and useless. Saving was a unknown term as was mint. You tied them up in a rubber band in sequence, so nos. 1 and 407 had the most wear. Hall of famer Eddie Matthews was no 407 and because he was the last card and is very hard to find in mint condition.

Cards were used for trading, shooting to the wall, flipping and gliding of the wall. No one attached value to them. You knew one player was better then another, the term common wasn't in fashion yet, so what you said was "give ya 3 for him"

Harvey