Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
Despite its short run of only 16 issues, Topps Magazine produced a ton of amazing content, including this brief piece from Skip Rozin on New York heroes Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider.
I love that the magazine highlighted the three players’ 1952 Topps baseball cards.
Just before the 2024 National, there was a lot of noise across the hobby about a PSA 9 graded 1953 Stahl-Meyer Franks Mickey Mantle hitting the market; imagine if this printer’s proof set came up for sale now, too!
First, Sports Collectors Daily has a nice overview if you want to read more about the PSA 9 Mantle, which has an asking price north of $2.5M. Also, here’s a link to the site the card’s owner made to help market it.
Mastro offered the printer’s proof set in their April 2006 Sports Auction catalog.
Here’s the lot’s description:
Here’s one of the rarest of all early 1950’s regional card productions, featuring a selection of the period’s biggest stars from the three New York teams. Stahl-Meyer collectibles were issued only with that single brand of hot dogs (just one card per package) and only in the New York area. When finished Stahl-Meyer cards were created, they were specially cut with rounded corners, and they were covered with a thick wax coating to protect the cards from being ruined by the hot dogs with which the pieces were packed. The bright and clean full set of nine Stahl-Meyer cards here offered was dearly spared any time spent in proximity to meat products. These items have been carefully hand-cut from a proof sheet and were never publicly distributed; with a single exception, they exhibit square corners and carry no protective wax coating. This unique set emanates from a special “find” of nearly 25 years ago, when a small but significant hoard of survivors from Milprint the Wisconsin printer who produced many of the most popular regional issues of the 1950’s yielded groups of treasures from the Stah-Meyer, Dan Dee, Hunter’s, Johnston Cookies and Briggs releases. Described without reference to the hand-cut nature of the items, these proof cards and their respective presentation quality include: Bauer (GD/VG), Campanella (VG), Hodges (GD/VG), Irvin (VG/EX), Mantle (EX/MT), Rizzuto (GD/VG), Snider (VG) and Thomson (VG). The ninth card Lockman, the only waxed, final-process card held in quantity by the printer grades VG/EX. A verifiably peerless complete printer’s proof set, this offering represents an especially glamorous potential addition to one of the industry’s most important collections.
Happy collecting!
Here’s an awesome advertisement, scanned from a June 2005 auction catalog for B.F. Goodrich P-F Canvas Shoes featuing a slew of MLB legends.
A few years later, in 2013, Lelands sold a framed copy of the awesome stadium-designed cardboard ad, mentioning that it measures 19” x 25”. They also highlighted the inclusion of Sam Jethroe as an early African American promotion—that copy sold for $640.
If you look around, you’ll find several variations dating later into the ’50s that include legends like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays. However, if you want them in your collections, they’ll cost you many thousands of dollars. Luckily, they all feature floating heads!
This 1964 Topps Salesman’s Sample Ad Card featuring Mickey Mantle was auctioned off in August 2006.
It’s encapsulated as “authentic” by PSA and was used to drum up interest and give a sneak preview to dealers and collectors for the 1964 Topps Baseball series. The triptych (a picture or carving in three panels side by side) measures 7-9/16” x 3-1/2” with Mickey Mantle, Jim Davenport, and Boog Powell on the front. While the auction didn’t include a photo of the back, they described it as having information about the prospective series’ special features and insert products and also had a Mantle card back as a design example.
Heritage resold the same item in December 2020 for $7,200; they wrote, “One of the fuels that drove the Topps machine was the salesman sample. They featured three cards but had Topps sales propaganda or a sticker selling the set on the reverse. For their 1964 effort, they wisely picked baseball’s best in HoFer Mickey Mantle to promote the upcoming 587-card series. Mantle is joined by fellow major leaguers Jim Davenport and Boog Powell but it is Mantle’s card used for the reverse example.”
If you own any salesman samples, I’d love to chat with you about them for my research.
In 1954 and 1955, when kids were ripping packs of Topps baseball cards, many were undoubtedly disappointed when they learned that they wouldn’t be pulling a Mickey Mantle card. And the reason why is simple, Topps never printed them. This article will explain why and show a few of my favorite custom 1954 Topps and 1955 Topps Mickey Mantle cards and the versions Topps has shared.
Topps didn’t print a Mantle card as part of its 1954 or 1955 baseball sets because it legally couldn’t. Bowman and Topps had such a fierce rivalry in the early post-war era that they each tried to sign exclusive agreements with the most popular players to differentiate their products. In 1954 and 1955, Bowman managed to sign Mantle. In 1956, Topps purchased Bowman, so Topps sets were more “complete” from that point forward.
However, even though Topps didn’t print a Mantle card in 1954, it didn’t stop them from publishing an example of what one would have looked like on paper stock. They partnered with Sports Illustrated Magazine in 1954 and printed a black & white Mantle “card.”
Sports Illustrated wanted to boost magazine sales and included 27 paper-thin cards in its first two editions. The first edition included stars like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Duke Snider, and Eddie Mathews. The second edition was exclusively Yankees, and the 27 printed cards included a 1954 Topps-style Mickey Mantle card.
Topps also, many years later, gave us an example of a 1955 Topps Mickey Mantle card. Topps was printing their own magazine during the peak of the junk-wax era, and in their third edition, released in the summer of 1990, they had a special on “Mantle Mania,” and the center-fold included a 1955 Topps Mickey Mantle style card.
Many other collectors and hobbyists have produced custom 1954 and 1955 Topps cards, but my favorites come from hobby pioneer Bob Lemke, who unfortunately passed away in 2017. On his blog, you can read about his custom efforts: “Ho-Hum … another 1954 Topps-style Mantle. But mine has a story” and “My ’55 Mantle completes Topps-style customs.” I think it’s fantastic that he re-used the portrait that he put on the 1954 custom on his 1955 Mantle, too, just as Topps often did back then.
I’m sure that many Mantle collectors are bummed that Bowman had the exclusive contract to print his cards in 1954 and 1955. But their pocketbooks must be thankful; can you imagine how pricey those Topps cards would be now? Leave your price estimates down in the comments, and happy collecting!
Folks might not know that Mickey Mantle owned a Holiday Inn hotel in Joplin, Missouri, with his friend Harold Youngman; Lodging Magazine wrote an excellent overview. The hotel opened on January 1, 1957, with a gift shop; today, souvenir items are really popular amongst Mantle collectors, including the matchbooks.
I only have the example pictured above, but essentially, there are five variations: the Diamond Match Division (PSA-graded pop of 121), The Diamond Match Division-Gold on White (PSA-graded pop of 10), Universal Match Corp (PSA-graded pop of 66), Universal Match Corp-Gold on Dark Brown (PSA-graded pop of 2), and Universal Match Corp-Yellow Background (PSA-graded pop of 16).
In January 1983, Trader Speaks published this great piece from Frank Keetz highlighting the 44 times between 1923 and 1982 that a baseball player appeared on Time Magazine’s cover!
A few highlights:
Here are the Sisler and Mantle covers:
