By now, I’m sure everyone’s gotten a good look at the Bowman Mickey Mantle card I sold a couple months back. I wanted to take the time to talk a little bit more about how I found it, and share some cool insights on the card.

So, there I was, flipping through a shoebox full of old hollywood movie star cards and European tobacco cards (these were like little freebies given away with the smokes, y'know, - buy a pack of chew and get a little greta garbo card that you could give to your kid for their collection). I came across an old stack of small baseball cards rubber banded together with a dried-out olllllld rubber band that disintegrated as I tried to undo it. I flipped through the stack and found that 99.9% of the cards were common and/or less desirable players, but it did have the diamond-in-the-rough Mickey Mantle card.

My listing the Mickey Mantle card happened to coincide with another Mickey Mantle card auction on Heritage Auctions (check it out here), but that one was running for about a month (though that card was from the year before, which happened to be his rookie year - and it was one of the best examples the world has been). It was anticipated that this was going to be the most expensive baseball card ever sold at auction - their estimate was $3.1 million or another ridiculously high amount. Either way, it went for $2.8 million, which isn’t exactly chump change for a stinkin' baseball card.  

As the old saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats, and I was fortunate enough to have an early Mantle up for auction around that same time. It ended up being listed twice, as we ran into some complications with the first buyer. It’s still one of my favorite finds, and definitely one of my most popular listings on eBay to date.