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SEE IT: Mickey Mantle Baseball Card With Mysterious History Shatters Records At Auction

   DailyWire.com
A baseball card from Yankee great Mickey Mantle's rookie year shattered the record when an anonymous buyer paid $12.6 million for it.
(Getty Images)

A pristine Mickey Mantle baseball card from the Yankee Hall of Famer’s rookie season fetched a whopping $12.6 million at auction, shattering the prior record for any piece of sports memorabilia.

The 1952 Topps card, graded a 9.5 for condition, is the “finest known example” of the slugger’s first-season card. Mantle, who hit 536 home runs over his 18-year career, has long been a favorite of collectors. The anonymous buyer purchased the card Saturday at a memorabilia sale by Heritage Auctions.

“This card is arguably the finest-condition example of the most iconic post-war card in the world,” Chris Ivy, Heritage’s director of sports auctions, said in a statement. “That grade, plus the fact it has documented provenance from the most storied find in hobby history, puts this card in a category of its own.”

The 1952 baseball card is the most pristine known example of the iconic card.

The 1952 baseball card is the most pristine example of the iconic card. (Courtesy of Heritage Auctions)

The previous record price paid for a baseball card was $7.25 million, set earlier this month by the sale of a T206 Honus Wagner card. The Wagner card, put out from 1909-1911 by the American Tobacco Company, is especially rare because the Pittsburgh Pirates great demanded it be pulled over his objection to smoking. Another Wagner T206 sold a year ago for $6.606 million.

The previous record was set by the sale of this baseball card of Hall of Famer Honus Wagner.

The previous record was set by the sale of this baseball card of Hall of Famer Honus Wagner. (Jefferson Burdick Collection)

A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card graded at 9 sold for $5.2 million earlier this year.

The provenance of the record-setting Mantle card is the stuff of legends. Well-known collector Alan Rosen reportedly got a call in 1986 from a Boston-area forklift operator who told him a pal, Ted Lodge, had inherited it from his late father and wanted to sell it. Lodge’s father had worked as a truck driver for Topps and had saved several boxed sets of the entire 1952 series.

Rosen hired a police officer and drove to Quincy, Massachusetts, with $125,000 in cash to pay for 5,500 1952 Topps cards, including dozens of Mantles. In 1991, Rosen sold one of the Mantle cards for $50,000 to a buyer who remained anonymous for 31 years.

That buyer, Anthony Giordano, rejected several private, multimillion-dollar offers until his sons persuaded him to have the card graded put under the hammer.

In the same auction, Heritage sold an autographed Hillerich & Bradsby bat used by Babe Ruth sometime around 1920 for $1.68 million.

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