Conundrum Looming

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by steve B

There's even a great story, that the 52 high numbers are "rare" because the remainders were dumped in the harbor/river/ocean

I would agree it's a great story, but it's dubious at best. There are Topps employees who said they never heard tell of that from Mr. Berger until he was a much older man, and even then it was a wildly inconsistent story when he told it. Supposedly someone went to the trouble to track down a few other Topps employees who had been there when the event was supposed to have happened (1960 or so) - and none of them remembered anything like that at all.

I suppose we'll never know for sure - which of course makes the story attractive because it was possible - just adding to the mystique of the '52 Mantle.

[vintagebaseballcardguy]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

I would agree it's a great story, but it's dubious at best. There are Topps employees who said they never heard tell of that from Mr. Berger until he was a much older man, and even then it was a wildly inconsistent story when he told it. Supposedly someone went to the trouble to track down a few other Topps employees who had been there when the event was supposed to have happened (1960 or so) - and none of them remembered anything like that at all.

I suppose we'll never know for sure - which of course makes the story attractive because it was possible - just adding to the mystique of the '52 Mantle.

Wouldn't it be great if they found a bunch of '52 highs just sitting in a warehouse somewhere? Release those babies, flood the market, and drive down the price so that people like me can afford one! Of course those who have forked over big money for #311 wouldn't be too happy about that, and I couldn't blame them.

[Volod]

Originally Posted by vintagebaseballcardguy

Wouldn't it be great if they found a bunch of '52 highs just sitting in a warehouse somewhere? Release those babies, flood the market, and drive down the price so that people like me can afford one! Of course those who have forked over big money for #311 wouldn't be too happy about that, and I couldn't blame them.

Hmmm, a warehouse that no one had thought to enter in sixty years - I wish there were one of those in my neighborhood. Even if such a thing could happen, how many new cases of high numbers would be required to drop the asking price of those cards? The only such find that comes to mind is the hoard of Topps Red Backs that someone uncovered back in the '80's, and I don't recall that the market value of that issue was much affected by it, perhaps because there wasn't much anyway. But, who knows - maybe that incident was in the news when Berger sat for the interview in which he made the notorious claim and it inspired him to spin an imaginative tale.