Mantle Reality
 

Since there is (let's be honest) a complete obsession with Mickey Mantle in baseball card circles, I would like to get a glimpse of how much of this is based on first-person experience. For example, in the future everyone here can say that they were around to see Mike Trout and Albert Pujols (just to name a couple of players) in action on TV and/or in person while they were active players. How many people here can say the same about Mickey Mantle?

I am old enough to have seen him live in a few games at the old DC/RFK Stadium.

I never saw him play. For that reason I don't view him much differently than I do Mike Schmidt or Jimmie Foxx, aside from his ungodly number of WS homers.

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I was 2 when he retired. Never saw him play.

In the late 70s/early 80s, the price guides were all about Mantle. I remember getting my first Mick (64 Topps) and still have it today. I remember thinking "I have a friggin Mantle!"

Mickey Mantle. Great name. Hobby icon.

My brother and I collected in the late 60s. We had dozens of Mantles and everyone else. It never would have occurred to us they could be worth anything.

+1
Mays, Koufax and Ted Williams were more collected in our neighborhood. Most Mays and Mantle cards were priced the similar until the mid 80s. Then Mantle got hot and the gap seems to get bigger every year.

My recollection from my first couple card shows around 1981 was that Mantle was already priced much, much higher than Mays. Taking some random 1958-1963 card in G-VG as an example, Mays/Aaron might have been $15 and Mantle would have been $25.

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I answered the poll ("not born"), but before so I actually had to look him up in the almanac to double check his final season---I guess an indication of my indifference to him from a collecting perspective. A minority opinion for sure, but as you implied I feel like the competition is too widespread, and so it would be an enormous resource drain for me away from things I am interested in, so I just stay away. His player set has lots of interesting odd and unusual items, but they remain of interest to me only from afar, in part probably from that lack of direct playing connection.

mantle
 

I was not around. However, my father who grew up in the Bronx, talked about
him with god-like status throughout my childhood. This is a man who hasn't
missed a Yankee game on TV/radio since Stengel was manager. Needless to say, I
wore number 7 for all my little league teams. 1995 was the first time I saw my dad cry.

Wasn't alive. My mom is a huge Yankee fan, so she got me started with her stories of her childhood baseball card collection.