Collectors love scarcity when it comes to vintage cards and vintage sports memorabilia. Vintage game-worn baseball jerseys have a serious degree of scarcity to them. Unlike the modern era where players may have dozens of uniforms, many players in the 1950s and 1960s were assigned far fewer uniforms (often just 4) each season. If you think Mickey Mantle cards are treasures for collectors seeking scarcity, you should look at what has happened around his uniforms.

Heritage Auctions has up for grabs a 1968 Mickey Mantle New York Yankees game worn jersey. It’s not just any jersey either. This is authenticated as a MEARS A10 jersey, signed and photo matched — and it’s Mantle’s last New York Yankees jersey.

And if that isn’t a strong enough description for scarce items, Heritage Auctions further noted that this same jersey was also worn in the 1968 All-Star Game and is the jersey he was wearing when he hit career #534 and #535 home runs.

This unique item has been assigned a $1 million (and up) estimate by Heritage. There is some history here about this exact jersey that may have some collectors believe that the $1 million price estimate could be an understatement. (Image below by Heritage Auctions). Even with 27 days remaining, the last bid of $410,000 is really $492,000 after the buyer’s premium. Only 13 bids have been placed as of this time.

Heritage has confirmed in its release that this is the third time this exact some “elite relic” has come through the Heritage system. They even showed that the first sale was for $486,000 in February 2017, but it was resold again for $850,000 in August 2020. According to Heritage on the rising price:

That rather substantial advancement in value was based upon nothing more than the steep incline the of elite sports collectibles market in general, with no further context added beyond the passage of time.

Heritage also went on to note that home run #535 has been filed under the bold headline of “The Gift” in baseball history. The pitcher Denny Mclain, the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season, “essentially served up batting practice to a faded legend on the brink of retirement with the intention of allowing Mantle to homer near the end of a game and an American League season already safely in the hands of the Detroit Tigers.” McLain’s so-called “charity toss” on September 19 also carried Mantle past Jimmie Foxx with just eight games remaining in his career.

Heritage has noted that confirmation of this jersey’s provenance was the result of studying the limited photography and television footage from the Mick’s last stand to establish a definitive match. Heritage further noted that the thick paperwork that documents this conclusion will be available to all interested parties in its entirety at its online lot listing.

Here is what else Mantle’s last jersey is shown and the additional photos of the relic and document photos to have on its details:

Interior collar holds embroidered “Mantle” swatch, while lower left front tail holds twin “Wilson” brand labeling reporting size “42” and “1968 Set 2” respectively. The jersey exhibits moderate game wear and presents in 100% original and unaltered condition, garnering the highest possible rating from the experts at MEARS. The 8/10 blue sharpie inscription at upper right chest reads, “To Tom, A Great Friend Always, ‘The Mick,'” the original recipient having been the president of the “Mickey Mantle Museum” in Cooperstown and highly-regarded hobby expert Tom Catal, who supplies a letter speaking to the McLain home run provenance.

It was Mantle himself who informed his buddy Tom about the garment’s connection to his final round-tripper wearing road gray, and it’s frankly no surprise that Mickey would have focused his own attention more firmly upon the cooling embers of his greatness rather than the moment a little over a week later when the Commerce Comet faded to black. But surely now we can all agree that it was the young Denny McLain, at the red-hot center of his own prime, who most clearly understood the magnitude of this closing chapter.

The instant that Petrocelli gloved Mantle’s pop-up on September 28, 1968, a history dating back nearly a half-century came to an end. With the exception of three seasons during the Second World War, an all-time legend of the game had actively served as the face of the New York Yankees, and of Major League Baseball itself. From Ruth to Gehrig to DiMaggio to Mantle, this unbroken chain bound countless American hearts to our national pastime, and powered an era of glory unlike any other in sports history. Place this jersey at the center of one hundred years of Yankees history, and you’ll find twenty World Championships before it, and just seven since.

Taking a wider view of Mickey Mantle as a cultural figure, we see in his retirement another blow struck against the American idealism that held sway over our nation between the end of the Second World War and the era of political assassinations and societal strife of the late 1960’s. Meanwhile, the advent of free agency would transform Major League teams from longstanding families into roving bands of mercenaries. We had lost not only the last true baseball icon, but the ecosystem in which such a figure was even possible.

So it’s a true challenge to adequately express the towering significance of this jersey in the history of the New York Yankees, of Major League Baseball, and of America itself. Simon and Garfunkel got it wrong when they asked Joe DiMaggio where he’d gone. It was Mickey Mantle that closed out the dynasty, wearing this jersey, and there could never be another one like it. LOA from MEARS, A10. Photo Match LOA from Jake Glassey. Letter of provenance from Tom Catal. Full LOA from Beckett Authentication Services. LOA from Heritage Auctions.