So I started a Mickey Mantle "project"......

[DJCollector1]

With all the doom and gloom threads and recent grading shenanigans, I figured some of you might want to enjoy a thread about good old fashioned "enjoyment" of the hobby.


I have posted the majority of this over on Blowout, but the postwar section here has been a bit dry lately, so I figured I would add this in. (Plus there are a few more fierce Mantle collectors here that may enjoy this as well)


Quick backstory - Like many, I began collecting when I was younger. My father and I were into it at a good time, back in the late 70's to mid 80s.
You could still find "great finds" at yard sales, flea markets, etc. etc.
In fact my father was a partner in a card shop, back in the early 80s, which was the first anywhere around. (around Richmond Virginia)
We built a pretty good collection back then, and ultimately in my late teens I lost interest, and when my parents divorced back then we sold everything.
Err, BIG MISTAKE.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple years ago, and I started dabbling in football again, and before long I was looking to replace some vintage cards we had years ago. The bug had bitten me once again~!


I read a couple books on Mickey Mantle not too long back, and I started picking up a few cards here and there of his.
I told myself I was going to make a framed display piece, of vintage baseball cards and other oddities, and I had chosen to target Aaron, Mays and Mantle....and after researching more on Mickey Mantle, I decided to make my display strictly on "The Mick".


I didn't want to use reprints, as anyone could do that. So I decided to pursue "lower end" cards of his, but fairly good eye appeal, real vintage cards, not reprints.

Anyone here that has dabbled in Mantle, knows finding any strong eye appeal examples, isn't easy as his market, and collectors are pretty competitive.
Any high eye-appeal Mantle cards are snapped up off Ebay (and the other places) in ALL GRADES fairly quickly so I knew it would be a slow but interesting undertaking.
Also, since these were ultimately going into a display , (and not to be tucked away and locked up somewhere) I wanted to keep the eye-appeal good, but the cost down.
This would be a good way for me to enjoy some of his cards, without the more valuable items just lying around.... those are indeed locked away somewhere.

So a few months ago, I started picking up a few items and slowly piecing together my "project".
I am not quite done yet, but I am closing in as I have nabbed a large majority of it.

I know not everyone will agree with the "choices" of cards I am using, but for various reasons, I like these particular cards. Plus, many of these are cards that can be had "relatively cheaply" in the very low grades.
I will also include the prices on certain items, to give you an idea of what I was trying to spend, keeping the cost down (and ultimately what I wanted to accomplish) when making this.

I will recap the progress I have made over the last few months in the upcoming posts.

Hopefully some of you will get a kick out of this or find it interesting.

[DJCollector1]

3-28

Picked up a nice raw Jay Pub, pictured below.

1962-1965 MICKEY MANTLE JAY PUB Photo -





Notice it is raw. The display I am tinkering with will utilize raw cards only, so I have been picking up some decent "good eye appeal", but lower grades Mantles, which is a bit of a challenge unto itself.
This JAY PUB photo is in great shape, but it has a few minor flaws. It is not mint, and instead it has a slightly aged look, and thats precisely what I was looking for in my display "piece", there won't be any PSA 9's in this one.
I thought grabbing this for a mere $35 was excellent~!
I always liked this particular image, and I knew from day one it would be a part of this project.

This project may take me a few months, but I have a good start on it already.

[DJCollector1]

3-30


Still slowly adding to my "Mickey Mantle display project".
Looking over a few more "solid eye-appeal" lower end ungraded Mickey Mantles, I came across this one on EBAY a week or so back.
While its not exactly my favorite Mick image, it does reflect back to his key '56 MVP season.




This is exactly the type raw card I am looking for, and its right in my wheelhouse for my "display items" project I am tinkering with.

A very tiny surface wrinkle that you can only see at a certain angle kept the price very low. I believe this was roughly $65 delivered.
Has decent centering, and all the eye appeal hallmarks I am pursuing for a display-bound lower end raw Mantle.

Another pickup I'm satisfied with. !

More coming soon.

[DJCollector1]

4-4



It looks as if it may have possibly been lightly trimmed, but looking at it compared to other cards, its awfully close, I mean really close.

To me, this card looked like it was a sort of a miscut, and someone went back and tried to "straighten it out".
Regardless, even if it was slightly trimmed, its right in my "Mantle project" wheelhouse, and I liked that its extremely presentable for the price.

I got this one VERY CHEAP, in the B/S/T section over on Blowout.

I don't mind it appears to have been lightly trimmed, as it will go nicely in the display I am working on......which is starting to take shape.
As I think back on this one, I am still debating on whether or not I should put this in my custom display.
The fact its trimmed, doesn't really "bother" me in that sense, but it is a bit of an irritant.
But, all that aside it has a good clean image and presents well, even though the borders may have been lightly trimmed.
Thats mostly what I have been looking for, and it fits like a glove into this project.
I believe I got it for right around $40 bucks delivered, and I certainly can't complain with that, as I was very happy with the card I picked up for that price.
Is it something that will appreciate into a ton of money? No, and the trim job will always detract from the value, but the eye appeal of the image is otherwise very good, so it fit all the right criteria for my project.






I have a '68 Topps game Mantle en route, and I will be posting that in the next day or two.

[DJCollector1]

4-6


Snagged yet another Mickey Mantle for my display.
This time its a '68 Topps Game..... while admittedly this issue was never among most people's favorites, I didn't mind it at all.
I distinctly remember many of these when i was younger, it certainly is a "stand out" issue, unlike most any other commonly produced cards back then.




Solid eye appeal, and again its right along the lines of what I was looking for.

I have already picked up my next card, and this next one is a sparkler. !
I'll post it late this week when it comes in.

Chugging right along with this display, and truth be known I won't have room for too many more cards. Just trying to decide which I want to include at this point.

[DJCollector1]

4-15




I had been looking for a great looking '59 for a bit, and this one was actually slabbed. I soon busted it out, as I'm not putting in anything in slabs into my display.

I'm slowly moving towards the end of my project, but there is still room for a few more cards.
Looking to likely get an excellent eye-appeal '58 AS, if I can find one reasonably. After all, that is easily one of his more iconic cards.

I saw this '59 on Ebay, and it had a fair BIN price, but "OBO".
I sent him a bit of a low-ball offer, but much to my surprise it was accepted very soon thereafter.

Another strong addition, and my earliest Mantle thus far, headed to my display project.
The glare in the lower right is from the light source directly behind me.



This will undoubtedly be my most expensive card in this project, working from memory , I believe it was around $130 delivered. (Why so cheap you ask??? It was in a PSA 4 MK slab)
Some kid took a very light pen and wrote a tiny "7" on the back of the card, his jersey number. Its so slight and hard to see, if it wasn't pointed out to you, you likely wouldn't notice it was even there.
So a small "7" on the back led me to getting an absolutely beautiful '59 for what I thought was a great price.
I wanted to get one really nice vintage Mick, that looked to be in great shape to slide in to this display.....BINGO! this was it.

[vintagebaseballcardguy]

That '69 looks pretty good, especially considering it was in a SGC 3 holder. Any creasing? I couldn't see any. Nice job.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[DJCollector1]

Originally Posted by vintagebaseballcardguy

That '69 looks pretty good, especially considering it was in a SGC 3 holder. Any creasing? I couldn't see any. Nice job.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

Thanks... I'm extremely happy with it.
I looked at a TON of '69s, '60s , '55 Bowmans and a few other issues I didn't have examples of, for inclusion into my project. My object was to keep the cost very low, but over time it crept up a bit, with a select few cards being more expensive than the others.
I wanted a nice '55 Bowman pretty bad, but ultimately I needed to go with another vertical card, so I chose the '69. (Layout/space concerns)
It may have a very faint, slight wrinkle near the top, but truthfully to me it doesn't matter. As long as it has fair eye appeal, that was what I was really looking for.
As luck would have it, I got this '69 from fellow board member Dboneesq. Thanks again sir.
I actually almost wanted to just keep it in the slab and tuck it away, but I figured I wouldn't be finding many '69s that looked as decent as that one... in that price range anyway. Centering is flat brutal on the '69s generally. Besides, just tucking away another card for my PC, that defeats the purpose of this.
That said, I went ahead and cracked it out, and into the display it will go.

I knew from the beginning, I wasn't exactly going to have any super high grade cards for my framed display...for 2 reasons.
A - This is going to be something I can enjoy on a daily basis. I didn't exactly want, nor expect to have a bunch of PSA 9s. This will be something that can "scratch my card itch" if you will regularly. I don't know how many here keep their more expensive items just "lying around", but I certainly don't.

B - My more valuable items are safely tucked away, far from my residence. My collection is very small and modest compared to most here, as I just started picking up a few items here and there a year or two back. But I wanted something I could enjoy, without worry.


There is but one piece to this puzzle left, and it will be a little bit more expensive. Plus, I may take a bit longer deciding which particular item I actually get. There's a few around, I'm just wanting to make sure I get something that fits "the look" so to speak.
Then off to a trusted local frame shop, and see what they have to say.
I may have mentioned it, but the local shop near me is very well known, and has worked on some very important projects occasionally.
They aren't cheap, but it will definitely look good.

Hopefully I can wrap this up in a couple weeks.

[DJCollector1]

Well, that took longer than expected.
Sometimes life gets in the way, but better late than never. I wanted to be done with this 2 months ago or so, but it has dragged on longer than anticipated.

This is the last piece I wanted to include, and will go right in the framed display I am getting done. (Actually, I looked over a bunch of similar signed cards and items, and I ultimately settled on this one)





Off to the frame shop in a few days, and hopefully I get it back in a couple weeks.


This was a lot of fun getting the "right items" for my project/wants , and it took a while....... but it will be worth it soon enough.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by DJCollector1

Well, that took longer than expected.
Sometimes life gets in the way, but better late than never. I wanted to be done with this 2 months ago or so, but it has dragged on longer than anticipated.

This is the last piece I wanted to include, and will go right in the framed display I am getting done. (Actually, I looked over a bunch of similar signed cards and items, and I ultimately settled on this one)





Off to the frame shop in a few days, and hopefully I get it back in a couple weeks.


This was a lot of fun getting the "right items" for my project/wants , and it took a while....... but it will be worth it soon enough.

What made you choose that one over the others?

[DJCollector1]

Originally Posted by bnorth

What made you choose that one over the others?

There are usually a few signed index cards floating around on Ebay at any given time to choose from.
Some have little "headshot" pictures, some are personalized, are "signed cut" scraps, are multi signed or various other little attributes. (Plus, although I will soon snag an autographed baseball card for my PC, I wanted an older style plain index card for this...... NOT a signed baseball card)
Its hard to tell from my poor cell phone picture, but this is an older example. I'm going to assume its from the late 70's or early 80s, judging from the index card and the toning. (Plus its in pen, and I wanted that over a pencil or Sharpie)
This one was close to what I was expecting in price too.

I'm not really sure if you watch the examples that come up for sale, but a couple months ago there was a VERY OLD Mantle signed slip of paper that came up. It was one of those with the very large "older style Mantle signed cursive M's", and you don't see the very old ones like that come up often. I figured it was from the 1950's.......
I really wanted to snag that one, but there was some absurd price on it, like $1,500 or something crazy. (Hell it may have even been in pencil too, I can't remember after looking at so many of these for months and months)


Looking back, I wish I'd have gotten 1-2 different cards. I really wanted to include a '55 Bowman, but it just didn't work out. (Plus I wanted to keep it on a semblance of a budget)
I might look over this stuff again and lay it all out, and if I'm not happy with it, who knows......... might just pick up a '55 Bowman yet.