Ex-Bronco to strike it rich with Mantle card

More than a year after retiring from the NFL, former Broncos guard Evan Mathis is on the brink of landing a big payday.

An avid collector of memorabilia, Mathis is selling a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA Mint 9 card through Heritage Auctions’ inaugural Sports Card Auction. Heritage estimates the card to be worth $3.5 million, which would set a record for the most expensive price ever paid at auction for a baseball card. The current record is $3.12 million, for Honus Wagner’s 190911 T206 that sold in 2016.

“Since the last auction offering of a PSA Mint 9 example over 10 years ago, the 1952 Topps Mantle rookie card has exploded in popularity and identified itself as the hobby’s ultimate blue chip stock,” Chris Ivy, the director of Sports Auctions at Heritage, said in a news release.

But Marshall Fogel, a memorabilia collector whose collection will be unveiled at the Colorado History Museum in April, believes Mathis’ card is worth even more.

“Over $5 million. Easy,” Fogel said. “A ’52 Mantle card by Topps baseball company is a second-year card of Mickey Mantle. The firstyear card is not as beautiful, nor is it as desirable, though it is important. It’s made by a different company and it more looks like a painting than a photograph. The ’52 Mantle is the King of King cards. If it’s a 9 or a 10 (grade), you’ve got something that is investment quality and it’s very desirable.”