24/7 Wall St.

If one weekend record price for vintage baseball card collecting being set earlier this year was not enough, yet another record is about to be set for an auction of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card. Two samples of Mickey Mantle’s rookie card set records earlier in 2015, in the same weekend, with a sale of $330,000 from Goldin Auctions and another for $382,400 from Heritage Auctions.

Now it is PWCC Auctions (Pre-War Card Collector) that is set to break the record books for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card sale. This is also graded in the same ultra-rare PSA 8 graded category from Collectors Universe Inc. (NASDAQ: CLCT), the same grade as the prior records. While there is no way to track privately negotiated transactions, those recent PSA-graded “8” Mantle card sales beat out all known prior record sales for the same card in any grade.

24/7 Wall St. would point out that the old records already were being broken as of the time this article published. The problem with auctions is that until that bidding actually ends, and until we know that bids have not been cancelled or rejected, we cannot count an auction as a final auction price even if the current auction price is above the old formal records.

What is so different about the PWCC Auctions versus the Heritage or the Goldin auctions is that this is taking place on the eBay auction format from eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY). This could be a game-changing auction, because most sellers of baseball cards are very reluctant to just throw their high-dollar merchandise like this on eBay. Still, PWCC has now had many auction items sell for more than other historical auctions have gone out at on eBay. The fees are far lower on eBay, so a seller gets to keep more of their sale — and it is at a lower cost for the buyer when it comes to buyer premiums. That being said, an auction via eBay for high-dollar items still comes with far greater risks. That is at least one of the many reasons why so many auction houses have thrived even as eBay has risen.

24/7 Wall St. communicated with Brent Huigens of PWCC Auctions in Lake Oswego, Ore. He confirmed the excitement around this 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle:

The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is arguably the most recognized sports card in the world. It now transcends the hobby from which it sprouted to represent this nation’s most iconic sport during its golden age, and thereby signifies a true piece of Americana. What was once a pure collectible is now a valid portfolio diversification which rivals the historical performance of virtually any other investment tool available.

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What matters about this Mickey Mantle “rookie” is that this card has three equally notorious issues about it, from opposite sides. The first issue is that the 1952 Topps Mantle is not really “the real rookie card” for Mickey Mantle. The true rookie card title belongs to the 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle, and there are a slightly higher number of PSA graded samples of that card. Another notorious issue with the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card is that it is now actually considered by most collectors as the face-card for vintage sports card collecting. A third issue is that the Mantle card is still nowhere near the most expensive vintage baseball card in today’s climate. There is a perhaps a fourth consideration here about “setting a new record price” versus the prior auctions that set records this year. We recently said:

Before you think that this $330,000 sale price and the $382,400 is all that there is to consider, there is actually more to the story. Auction houses charge a buyer’s premium, and the premium here from Goldin was said to be 21.5%. Heritage says that its realized price includes a 19.5% buyer’s premium, so that would imply a $320,000 sales price if there were no exceptions, versus an all-in price for the Goldin price of almost $401,000 if there were no discounts or price kickers.

Of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, there recently was shown to be more than 1,200 PSA-graded card samples and 374 SGC-graded card samples in existence of the 1952 Topps Mantle. Honus Wagner cards from the T206 tobacco baseball card set from 1909 certainly sell for higher, with one fairly recent Goldin Auction fetching some $2.1 million.

The other issue about the notorious 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is that the universe of graded cards is large enough that any vintage card collector, or any memorabilia investor, can participate in owning one of these if they have cash. Most of the graded 1952 Topps Mantle cards sell in a range of just under $10,000 to over $20,000 for the more frequently available grades. Also, there are dozens to more than a hundred such samples that come up for sale each year.

As for this record price, it is very rare for a graded sample of a PSA 8 and higher (on a scale of 1 to 10) to come up for auction or sale. Many samples come up for sale on eBay, online offerings and from the other well-known auction houses. 24/7 Wall St. had said that items of this magnitude attract investors as well as sports cards and memorabilia collecting enthusiasts, and Huigens also noted how this has outperformed most investments — the PWCC auction description has even noted that the PSA 8 samples (and higher) could possibly even come with a with a $1 million hammer prices in the coming years.

Another driving force is the PSA grading, as the grading company matters to many collectors. Some of the differences may seem unfair, and some grades are not quite universal, but there are examples that we used earlier in 2015.

To collectors it usually matters if there is a PSA grade (1-10) from Collectors Universe, a BVG grading (1-10) from Beckett or an SGC grade (10-100 and 1-10) from Sportscard Guaranty. And for ungraded cards of this magnitude, buyers and collectors simply will not pay up like this due to risks of fakes or alterations.

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To demonstrate that some collectors value one grading company’s grade much more than others, a 1952 Topps Mantle with BVG grading under Beckett as “8” sold for $81,348.40 back in 2013. The auction house Mile High had a SGC sample graded “86” sell for $62,417.90 in 2014. Here are some other auction results in high-end PSA graded cards of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card, sourced by each auction house and by VintageCardPrices.com (amounts do not include buyer premium and do not exclude auction fees):

• In 2014, a PSA 8 Mantle sold in a SCP Auctions lot with a listed sale price of $268,664.00.
• In 2013, Robert Edwards Auctions had a PSA 8.5 Mantle sold for $272,550.00.
• In 2006, a PSA 9 sample of the Mantle sold for $282,588.00 in a Memory Lane auction.
• Back in 2001 (some 14 years ago), a PSA graded “Gem Mint 10″ by PSA was sold for a record-breaking sale at the time of $275,000.

Now let’s consider that a “Mint 9” grade has a suggested market price (PSA/SMR) of $650,000 if one of the six PSA-graded samples ever comes up for sale. That figure actually has risen now to $750,000.00. This sale is likely to drive that even higher. As we noted prior to this record-breaking auction:

Auction prices are fairly easy to track. There are only a dozen or so real sources for pricing in auctions of this caliber. There can be off-the-record sales of other extremely rare graded cards that take place …

Kids buying bubblegum cards back in 1952 at convenience stores, grocery stores and department stores paid a mere five cents per pack …

Most of the Mantle cards from that 1952 Topps set that still exist today were not sold in large quantities all around the country due to the so-called high-number card releases taking place later in the year and often not to as many sales outlets. Some Mantle and 1952 Topps cards were salvaged rather than destroyed with vast numbers of the 1952 Topps cards at the end of the year.

Sales of this magnitude stand out to collectors and investors alike. This may also raise the bar for other high-end graded cards that are deemed the most desired cards to vintage collectors. The images below show both 1952 Topps Mantle cards, and any color variations are likely due to website images versus real life images.

As of Tuesday, November 3, 2015, the number of bids in this PWCC auction at PWCCauctions.com or eBay was up to 63 bids, and the last was seen at $430,400.00. That was also with five days left, and the auction ends on Sunday at 9:36 p.m. Pacific time. Get ready, official or not, a new record price is about to be fetched for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle.

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