It seems that Mickey Mantle card prices set new records in high-end sales almost every few months. Perhaps the biggest question is whether these sales lift the bar for all other Mantle card prices that are not just the ultra high-end cards. A new record has been set for a 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle rookie card. Memory Lane Inc.’s Fall 2022 ended December 3,2022 and a PSA 9 Mantle from the 1951 Bowman issue fetched $3,192,000.00.
The certification number of 7102558 was in Memory Lane’s Fall Rarities Auction and it sets more than just a new benchmark for other Mickey Mantle card sales of the highest grades. This is now two recent record prices in the same year for Mickey Mantle “rookie” cards. This $3.192 million sale is in the shadow of the $12.6 million auction for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card this summer.
In order to make sure the data was accurate looking back in time, both the PSA pricing and VintageCardPrices.com were used. Without deducting the buyer’s premiums from the calculations, the 2022 price was some 325% higher than when the last PSA 9 example of the ’51 Bowman Mantle sold.
This nearly $3.2 million auction (after the buyer’s premium) took 57 bids before the final winner was seen. The image below was from Memory Lane. So what about other PSA examples graded PSA 9 like this?
The PSA website under actual prices received shows that PSA certification #11336408 sold for $750,000.00 on April 20, 2018 via Heritage Auctions — and the same exact PSA certification number of the grade had sold for $588,000 via Memory Lane on October 14, 2017 and also for $220, 150 on August 30, 2013 via Memory Lane.
And amazingly, this exact card down to the PSA certification number sold for just $40,200.00 in an eBay auction in October 2007.
The PSA population report shows that there are 1,910 PSA graded examples of this card without any qualifiers. There are an additional 277 graded examples with “+” grades and 349 more examples with qualifiers (OC, PD, MC, MK). And of the 2,536 total PSA graded examples, only 9 examples exist at a PSA 9 grade and just 1 exists with the perfect PSA 10 grade.
Nether PSA nor VintageCardPrices.com have any sales history on the perfect PSA 10 example of the 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle.
VCP also shows that the highest price for any SGC graded ’51 Bowman Mantle card was $690,000 via Heritage Auctions back on May 8, 2021. That auction was just 14 bids and its grade was an SGC 9 under the new grading. The prior sale of the same grade was under the old scale (96/9) and VCP showed that its card price was $127,810.00 in a Mile High Card Co. auction on October 11, 2013.
