Mantle card auction funds house buying
After retiring from the NFL a little more than a year ago, Evan Mathis decided to move closer to where he grew up in Alabama.
And to get the kind of house he and his wife wanted, Mathis needed to free up some money. And that meant the avid sports card collector would have to part with his prized possession — a 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card.
“Just that image of the young Mickey Mantle, over the years it’s been a centerpiece of the hobby,” Mathis told The Associated Press. “I guess it’s kind of like the Mona Lisa of the sports card world.”
Issued as part of its first set of baseball cards by Topps, the Mantle card is the marquee piece of a card-only spring collection by Heritage Auctions. It is one of six versions of the card to have been rated a Mint 9 by PSA, one of the leading sports memorabilia authenticators, with three others having earned a Mint 10 rating.
The card has been estimated by Heritage to be valued at $3.5 million. For comparison, the highest price paid for a card at auction was $3.12 million two years ago for a 1909 Honus Wagner card.
Mathis, an offensive guard who won a Super Bowl with the Broncos, got into card collecting as a kid growing up as a fan of Bo Jackson in Birmingham, Ala., in the late 1980s. Jackson was a two-sport professional for the NFL’s Los Angeles Raiders and baseball’s Kansas City Royals. Mathis, about 6 years old then, started going to the store to buy packs of cards to get as many of Jackson as he could.
He was drawn to the 1952 Mantle card and bought several versions of the card inferior to the one he currently owns, and his best was a Mint 8 until about two years ago. That’s when a collector friend sent him a photo of his Mint 9 to show it off, and Mathis knew he had to have it.
Mathis said he traded the “vast majority” of his collection and agreed to a payment plan for the rest of the value to get the card. Now, he’s moving with his wife, Katelynn, and their two daughters from Arizona to Tennessee to be close to family, and he needed to free up some money.
“I don’t think I’ll have any regrets because I’ll have a nice house to show for it instead of the card,” he said.
Dustin Johnson had a tough week in his title defense at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. The World’s No. 1 player lost all three of his matches and was eliminated in pool play. His Friday match was a lackluster 4-and-3 defeat to Kevin Kisner.
But it included an epic moment: Johnson blasted a drive 489 yards. It was 13 yards farther than the longest drive recorded on the PGA Tour in the ShotLink era (2003 to present).
But here’s the buzz-kill moment: Stats from this event don’t officially count. So Johnson does not own a new record here.
Congrats, Davis Love III. You hold onto your title for now.
It doesn’t count?