It's over.
The "finest known example" of a 1952 Topps Mantle card has sold for over $12 million at Heritage Auctions. It is the most paid for a sports item.
The previous record for a sports card was set earlier this month.
Chris Ivy, Heritage's director of sports auctions, said in a statement that the card is the best-condition example of the most famous post-war card in the world. This card is in a category of its own because it has documented provenance from the most storied find in hobby history.
The story goes that in 1986 Mr. Mint got a call from the Boston area. Ted Lodge is a truck driver and a friend of the forklift operator. Lodge found a fortune in a home that was in perfect condition.
The 1952 Topps set was a collector's item. The distribution of the 1952 set had been bungled and a trove of them sat in the basement for a long time.
The idea of mostly untouched 1952 Topps in an attic seemed impossible, but the man hired an armed police officer and drove to Quincy, Mass. He paid over a hundred thousand dollars for over five thousand 1952 Topps cards.
A Mantle was sold for $50,000 in 1991. The card was not graded for 31 years.
It's that Mantle.
For a long time, Anthony Giordano rejected large sums of money. The sons convinced him to move forward and get the card graded.
It's the third time in a year that the all-time record for a sports card has been broken after the August sale of the $6.606 million Wagner card by Robert Edward Auctions. In January of 2021, a 1952 Topps Mantle (graded a PSA 9) sold for $5.2 million, and a 2003 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection RPA (rookie patch autograph) sold for $5.2 million in April.
It was a big night for Heritage in game used items. The record for most expensive bat of all-time was broken in the same auction when a game-used Babe Ruth signature model Hillerich & Bradsby bat sold for $1.68 million. In 2004, the bat Ruth used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium sold for over one million dollars.
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