You probably saw this coming from ten miles away. Let’s title this “A Digital Grail Coming to You!” Topps has announced the official release of Mickey Mantle 1952 Baseball Card NFT. True baseball card collectors may prefer baseball cards over non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but now there is both.

Starting on March 1, 2022 the bidding will begin for the unique NFT. The process will be on OpenSea but it does come with special steps (see below).

Here is how it will work. The Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle Card NFT will be auctioned as a 1 of 1 on March 1 (1:00 pm Eastern), 2022 on the OpenSea platform. The auction will run for 72 hours and any bids in the last 10 minutes will place the auction into extended bidding by 10 minutes (Image below from ToppsTimeless.com).

The Topps site also says that the winner will have the opportunity to interview Mantle’s sons, Danny and David.

The Topps release says:

Deep within the annals of just a few prized collections comes a coveted vintage relic transformed for the Digital Age. As the Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle Card continues to be one of the world’s most rare collectibles, fans will now have the opportunity to cement Mantle’s legacy on the Ethereum blockchain.

In partnership with the Mantle Estate and Major League Baseball, Topps Timeless is honored to bring you the first ever licensed MLB NFT to be auctioned on OpenSea.

As for payments and bidding, ETH has to convert to WETH to bid. This is via UNISWAP on a 1-1 basis. The Topps release also indicates that converting the ETH to WETH may require a gas fee or transaction swap fee.

There have already been variations of the T206 Honus Wagner created digitally. The difference here is that the NFT will look exactly like the real 1952 Topps Mantle card and the digital card looks to have no wrinkles, and with perfect corners and perfect centering. Whether this is a win or lose in the final price, this will not be the last effort of this kind.

Just don’t expect that all “digital card NFT” releases in the future will be 1 of 1 when they can make more money selling parallels of the same cards with different print runs… or would that be “mint runs” for NFTs?

Would it be legal to start taking bets on what the final price will be?