Is the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle really that rare?
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If ever there were a baseball card candidate for "three lies and a truth," the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle would be it. The first lie, which is also the most easily debunked, is that the card is Mickey Mantle's rookie card. After all, Mantle's 1951 Bowman card came a full year earlier!
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The second lie, which is somewhat related to the next one, is that much of the 1952 Topps high number series, which included Mickey Mantle, ended up at the bottom of the Hudson River. This tall tale, shared decades later by former Topps vice president Sy Berger, makes for a great bit of Hobby lore but has never stood up to serious scrutiny. On the other hand, if true, it does make Sy Berger the original Big Dumper!
As for the third and final lie, it's that the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is particularly rare. Now, to a certain extent, all 1952 Topps baseball cards are rare compared to the typical cards of today, so there's that. The right question to ask, therefore, is how rare the Mantle is compared to other 1952 Topps cards, and here the answer may just surprise you.
In the old days, there was really no way for the casual collector to quantify the rarity of the Mantle card. The only available data lived in the form of Hobby lore, which almost universally proclaimed the card a rarity. Nowadays, collectors can look at the data firsthand, at least if they know what to look for, thanks to "population reports" from third-party grading companies like PSA.
Of the more than 300,000 cards PSA has graded from the 1952 Topps set, the number of Mantle cards is 2,075, making it the set's sixth most graded card behind only Hall of Famers Yogi Berra, Bob Feller, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Warren Spahn. That said, this is not to say the Mantle is the sixth most common card in the set. After all, cards of Hall of Famers like Mantle, not to mention Hobby grail cards, are always disproportionately graded compared to other cards in their same sets.
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Let's face it, just about everyone with a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle has either gotten it graded or heard from friends that they most definitely need to send the card in for grading. The same is just not so when it comes to rookie cards of Joe Shlabotnik. So what exactly does the 2,075 number tell us when it comes to Mantle? In fact, it doesn't tell us anything interesting. However, the Joe Shlabotniks of the set most definitely do!
The first thing to know about the 1952 Topps set is that it was released in six different series. (The Mantle card, numbered 311, led off the sixth and final series.)
- Series 1: 1-80
- Series 2: 81-130
- Series 3: 131-190
- Series 4: 191-250
- Series 5: 351-310
- Series 6: 311-407
While rarity could and usually did differ from series to series, all cards within the same series (apart from an exception that will come up later) had exactly the same rarity. In other words, if Topps cranked out exactly 500,000 copies of card 1 in Series 1, then Topps also cranked out 500,000 copies of cards 2, 3, 4, and so on within that same series. Ditto for the other Series, only their number might not be 500,000 but some larger number for a more abundant series and some smaller number for a more scarce series.
While the actual numbers involved are forever lost to the Hobby, this is exactly where PSA population numbers fill in some missing knowledge. Ignoring Hall of Famers, rookie cards of star players, and other cards likely to be disproportionately graded, here are ballpark population numbers for cards in each of the 1952 set's six series.
- Series 1: 800
- Series 2: 900
- Series 3: 700
- Series 4: 700
- Series 5: 600
- Series 6: 500
These populations suggest two things about the 1952 Topps set. First, they do seem to confirm that the final series was the rarest of the six, Big Dumping or not. But second, they seem to suggest the high number series wasn't exactly ultra-rare compared to the other rest of the set. If the story ended here, the conclusion might be that yes, the Mantle card is rare, just not 10x or even 2x as rare as the set's other cards. However, the story doesn't end here.
Many vintage sets, 1952 Topps among them, included "double prints" (or even triple prints!) of certain cards. A famous example is the 1933 Goudey set, whose sixth series included a double-print of Babe Ruth's iconic card #144. In the case of 1952 Topps, cards double-printed in the set's high number series included Jackie Robinson, Bobby Thomson, and (you guessed it!) Mickey Mantle! For each of these players, Topps literally printed twice as many cards as they did of other players in the same series.
Do the math here, and the result is unmistakable. Not only were there twice as many Mantles as there were typical players in Series 6 but there were more Mantles than there were typical players from any series in the set! In other words, take the least rare series of 1952 Topps, likely Series 2, and choose a random card from it. That card is probably rarer than the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle! Who knew?!
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So now that the three lies have been covered, how about the one truth? Without a doubt, the one truth of the Mantle is that it is and probably forever will be a Holy Grail in the Hobby if not the Hobby's most iconic card. So what if it isn't a rookie card, so what if there aren't thousands of them rotting among the fish, trash, and mob informants at the bottom of the Hudson, and so what if it's actually among the least rare cards in the set. It's still a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, and isn't that enough?
Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.