Could be missing the forest for the trees - Mantle and Mays were both in the 1951 Bowman set as rookies with little to support them except that they were highly touted as prospective players in New York. Were there any similarly hyped farm products for other cities in the '51 Bowmans? I dunno, but even MacDougal and Ford are in there, while players for other teams generally had to be proven vets to get a card. The card companies were biased toward major markets, just as media is today.
As for that Mantle photo, he does appear to me to be older than in most of his rookie images, so it very well could be from '53 or '54.
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