Oh, Mickey, you are so fantastic.
A Mickey Mantle baseball card from 1952 simply offered at an public sale for $12,600,000, making it essentially the most beneficial piece of sports activities memorabilia on the earth.
The earlier document was held by Diego Maradona’s Hand of God jersey from the 1986 World Cup, which a Russian oligarch bought for a cool $9.3 million. Honus Wagner’s baseball card fetched $6.6 million final yr, however Mantle’s rookie card nearly doubled that spectacular determine.
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“An eight-figure public sale end result within the sports activities market was the stuff of fantasy only a decade in the past,” says Chris Ivy, director of sports activities auctions at Heritage in Dallas.
However that fantasy grew to become a actuality over the weekend. Why the current surge? For starters, the Mickey Mantle card is in impeccable situation — it was graded Mint+ 9.5. by Sportscard Warranty Company. However consultants say there’s additionally been an increase in buyers shelling out huge bucks for nostalgia.
“Abruptly, persons are like, ‘Wow, these things may very well be artwork,'” says Michael Osacky, the lead appraiser for Skilled Sports activities Authenticator, in an interview with The New York Occasions.
May be time to tug that outdated shoe field of collectibles out of the closet.
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