Man looking through old collection discovers Mickey Mantle baseball card worth $1 million

A 1952 Mickey Mantle Topps baseball card.

(Image credit: AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

published 3 August 2018

When he saw an advertisement for a 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card being sold at auction with an estimated value of $3.5 million, he was sure this was a typo.

The man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, John, told The Associated Press that he used to collect baseball cards while growing up in Connecticut, and after seeing the ad, he was inspired to look at his own collection. His mother combined his collection with his older brother Ed's baseball cards, and stored them in a box in her attic. After she died in 2006, the box left her attic and went to John's home in New Jersey.

It turns out, the box contained five Mantle Topps cards from 1952. When John found out the Mantle card in the advertisement sold for $2.88 million, he asked Heritage Auctions to look at his cards. One card was in excellent condition and valued at $1 million, and it's now up for auction. John and Ed's father collected stamps and coins, and John told AP the card collection is in such good shape because his dad taught his sons how to value their collections. "We didn't abuse them," he said. "They were a collection. We watched how he did things and we did the same."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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