When Mickey Mantle made his debut with the Yankees, writer Leonard Schechter said of him, “He has a face as open as the part of America that he came from.” So there he was, a kid of nineteen, already heralded as the second coming of Babe Ruth, or at the very least the legitimate successor to Joe DiMaggio. “When he hits the ball, it even sounds different,” they said about him. “He’s got it in his body to be great,” added grizzled manager Casey Stengel, who had been around long enough to qualify as an expert. Such expectations are hard to measure up to, but Mantle did, and then some. At the time of this cards release in 1952 however, Mantle’s future was uncertain. However, by the mid-1950’s, when the tape-measure homers boomed off his bat and the RBI and runs scored accumulated, Mantle’s destiny took shape. Today, Mantle’s 1952 Topps issue is royalty in the field of card collecting. It is the most recognized and coveted post-war issued baseball card, and next to the T206 Honus Wagner, stands as the icon of the hobby.
The offered example is visually stunning with brilliant colors and tight corners. The skyward portrait of the young slugger is fairly well-centered, around 60/40 left to right and 65/35 top to bottom. The white borders and blue background are exceptionally crisp and clean, making Mantle's face and the yellow bat pop beautifully. The back is super clean and bright with slightly better centering. The only surface blemish we could find is on the bottom right corner where a few tiny scratches are barely visible only under intense magnification. We mention this only for extreme accuracy. This flaw is completely undetectable to the naked eye and has no effect on the card’s overall aesthetics, which exceeds its technical EX-NM 6 grade from SGC in our book.