1952 Topps Mickey Mantle

Private Collections Reap Big Sales – A Sports Cards’ Auction Report From 1996

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Sports Cards Magazine & Price Guide had a great feature in the mid-’90s, providing “a wrapup of some of the country’s largest sports auctions.” This one from September 1996 was chockful of incredible items.

Larson highlighted the John F. Kennedy signed ball as the highlight of Mastro’s auction that topped $850,000 in sales. But I wanted to compare two of the cards to today’s prices. The PSA 8 graded 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle sold for $24,394; today, that’s probably a $1M card. And the PSA 8 1914 Crack Jack Joe Jackson, well, Heritage sold one nine years ago for $101k.

As for the rest of the article, half of that stuff won’t show up for sale again, but if any of it does, you can bet on it being a lot pricier!

ACU-Card – America’s First Independent Sports Card Grading Service

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I scanned this ad for ACU-Card from the Spring 1990 issue (Edition 2) of Topps Magazine. 

Frankly, dozens of third-party authenticators have come and gone. You can see a great list of them here on the Collectors forums. What I’m more interested in is where that 1952 Topps Mantle card is today (by the way, there’s no way it’s real).

I’ve read that a coin dealer named Alan Hager started the company. Many collectors have shared that he wasn’t really a high-integrity character. But If you want to add a piece of hobby history to your collection, you can still find a bunch of ACU-Card slabs on eBay.