Brothers hit home run with Mantle cards

Most people who collect sports cards when they are kids usually end up storing them in boxes for years. That’s where they stay until something prompts the desire to go through them.

For a 76-year-old man from New Jersey who asked to be identified only by his first name John, it was seeing an ad in a newspaper earlier this year for a 1952 Mickey Mantle card being sold by Heritage Auctions with an estimated value of US$3.5 million.

At first, he was sure the listed price was an error.

When he didn’t see a correction the following day, he began looking through the collection he jointly owns with his older brother Ed. And when he saw the card sold by former NFL lineman Evan Mathis went for $2.88 million, that’s when John decided to call Heritage to have them evaluate his cards.

Their collection includes five Mantle Topps cards from 1952. The best in the brothers’ collection is graded an 8.5 by PSA, one of the leading sports memorabilia authenticators. It has been valued at $1 million by Heritage and is part of its Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction that runs through Aug. 19.

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