Could be the first 1955 Mascot Dog Food Cards of Mantle and Berra. Any Info?

[chuckw]

Originally Posted by bswhiten

The Mantle image looks like the same one used on the 51 Wheaties premium... I believe I read the image was taken from the 52 world series, but someone else may know more about that.

Good catch Ben - the Mantle is the same pose as the 1951 Wheaties Premium. It looks like the Mascot Dog food card is the original photo, and they added pinstripes to his jersey for the Wheaties premium card (old school Photoshop work! ... hand drawn back then). So the 2 Mascot Dog Food cards that I have were the original photos used to make the 1950 Bowman Yogi Berra and the 1951 Wheaties Premium cards. This helps direct me to think what I heard from Beckett - that they believe the Mascot cards are most likely from 1951 or 1952. Has anyone seen the Mascot image of Robin Roberts used in another card from the early 1950s? The Roberts card was the image I showed from the think vintage catalogue from SCD.
Thanks Ben.

[paul]

The same Roberts photo also appears on the 1950s Macgregor Advisory Staff Photo of Roberts. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, it is impossible to pinpoint the date of Advisory Staff Photos.

[sflayank]

1955 is correct for the robin roberts

[MattyC]

Let’s get these bad boys on the auction block; my bidding finger is ready!

[stlcardsfan]

I think that is disappointing that Beckett stabbed them as "1950's" as opposed to a specific year. Theses companies are so called experts. Come on Beckett do some research! Chuck, it sounds like you did much more work than they did. Weak effort by Beckett in my opinion.

[AustinMike]

Congratulations on getting the card slabbed.

Kudos to Beckett for slabbing it.

But more importantly, a big round of applause to Beckett for labeling it "1950s."

As mentioned earlier, the photo used on the card was taken during the 1952 World Series, on October 6, 1952. I've attached the photo and the back of the photo. So the card cannot be from 1951 and it is extremely unlikely that it is from 1952. It is most likely from 1953 or later. Whoever labeled the Mantle Wheaties issue with a 1951 issuance date has done collectors a huge disservice. And I definitely applaud Beckett for not going down that rabbit hole.

As far as saying Beckett should do some research and criticizing them for their "weak effort," how much research and effort did they put in to this card? I don't know, so I can't criticize them. I'm just happy they didn't follow PSA's lackluster performance and call this a 1951 issue thereby perpetuating and enforcing a definite error. I do agree it would be nice to have a definitive year for this card. But that would probably take many, many hours of effort and a definitive year may still not be found. And they would get paid how much for all that time? Whatever they charged to slab the card. And in the meantime, they hold on to the card to wait to slab it until they can find a definitive issuance year?

[Leon]

It is sort of funny that the original poster (hi Chuck) came to me about putting this thread with the rare cards on the front page. I believe I said let's try it in the correct spot first (the post war forum) and see if it gets attention. I think it has garnered enough attention to be brought back to the front page. This is a very cool and interesting story to me. Congrats to Chuck on some great cards...