[brian1961]

This is an interesting question. Mickey has so many wonderful cards. The word "top" may be interpreted any number of ways. I cannot list a top five without categorizing a bit.

Top 5 Mainstream Mantles:

1. 1952 Topps
2. 1953 Topps
3. 1953 Bowman
4. 1956 Topps
5. 1951 Bowman


Top 5 Exotic and Esoteric (all very scarce except the Dormand PC, as well as dynamite eye appeal):

1. 1953 Stahl-Meyer Franks
2. 1960 Post Cereal
3. 1959 Bazooka
4. 1960 Home Run Derby
5. TIE 1953-55 Dormand postcard (the common batting pose)
1962 JELL-O

Special mention should be made of the 1961 Topps Dice Game Mick. Since it was never actually issued, that makes it more of a "pipe dream". Woody Gelman sent most specimens out as samples to dealer/collector friends for their input, stapled to a note. Several were never sent out, salvaged by who knows who, and eventually were submitted to PSA by their owners. I recall a particularly sweet Don Drysdale. A Mantle without staple holes, but hand-cut from a sheet, took about 30K to win in a Mastro auction from about 2004. Larry Fritsch owned an uncut sheet of the complete set of 20. I would hazzard a guess that Larry was able to obtain it through Topps employee and fellow collector, Bill Haber.

Remember, the idea of a game board, with player cards, spinner, dice, etc. might have seemed like a decent idea, but Strat-O-Matic was about to debut their hugely successful game the following year. Perhaps Topps simply decided to nix the idea, not wanting to go head-to-head with that company's thoroughly developed game, even though Strat's game cards show no player picture. It is hard to say whether Topps' planned completed player cards would have been made into their normal flexichrome color cards. The final analysis was that Gelman's feedback was a collective "Nah!", and the Dice Game idea was scrapped.

It is hard to know where to exactly classify the 1961 Topps Dice Game cards. After all, there are a few graded examples. I think of the coin world, where a hard-cover book portraying the top 25 or 75 coins included a prototype 20-dollar gold piece from 1907. I believe it had Liberty with a Native American chieftain feathered headdress. The front of the design was then used on the 10-dollar gold piece. Anyway, the prototype double-eagle was saved and sold in the 70s for an immense price. However, it was a 1 of 1. Who knows how many Dice Game Mickey Mantles there are. So many collectors are afraid to say much of anything about what they own. Still, it has been a long time since those cards were originally dispersed. It would seem that the owners would have put them on the market by now. Once a collector reaches his 70s, if he gets that far, he tends to want to finally sell his holdings.

To make a long story short, the Dice Game were not test-marketed, but they did reach the prototype stage. Still valuable, just unreasonable to put on a list of wanted Mantles.


My background of hunting down and owning all of these except three (the Dice Game is one of those I never got), at one time or another, no doubt guides my choices. Good topic. --Brian Powell