Weekend Reading

Both Ends of the Ladder

The same card sold twice in one September weekend, for prices that don't seem like they belong to the same object. Two totally unrelated cards landed on the exact same price by accident. And a rookie card from 1989 just quietly broke a record nobody was watching for. Here's what I found interesting about all three.

Michael Jordan · Ken Griffey Jr. · Rickey Henderson · Willie Mays · Heritage · REA · Fleer · Upper Deck

Nobody Wrote It Down

A Brooks Robinson with no copyright line on it brought $72,000. A Lefty Grove nobody knew existed brought $58,800 the same night. And a photograph sold for $3 million. Three objects this month, and on all three the paperwork came last.

Brooks Robinson · Lefty Grove · Mickey Mantle · Baltimore Orioles · Topps · Huggins & Scott

The Year They Stopped Booing

For five seasons Yankee Stadium booed Mickey Mantle for the crime of not being Joe DiMaggio. In 1956 it stopped, all at once, and the card they printed of him that summer is the top lot in an auction closing Sunday night.

Mickey Mantle · New York Yankees · Michael Jordan · Babe Ruth · Jim Brown · Joe Namath · Walter Payton · REA · Topps

Nobody Was Supposed to Keep These

A 1952 Topps Mantle with rounded corners brought $390,400 in August. A Honus Wagner carrying no grade at all brought $5,856,000. Neither card was ever meant to survive this long, and that is most of why they are wonderful.

Mickey Mantle · Honus Wagner · Memory Lane · Heritage · Topps · T206

The Same Twenty-Five

We track thirty-nine cards and we picked them years ago. Over three days in August, Heritage Auctions sold twenty-nine lots that were already on the list — thirteen of our cards, $6,703,578 in all. Nobody compared notes. Here is what twenty-nine results on thirteen cards will show you that one result never can.

Mickey Mantle · Michael Jordan · Bill Russell · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar · Heritage

What a Transistor Radio Bought

A teenager traded his radio for a UCLA jersey in the Forum parking lot in the mid-1970s. This month it sold for $1,254,918. Two other objects nobody bought as an investment changed hands the same summer, and between them they say something fairly plain about what this market pays for.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar · Lew Alcindor · UCLA · Wilt Chamberlain · Patrick Mahomes · Heritage

What the Will Leaves Out

August is National Make-A-Will Month. Most collectors who get around to it will name who receives the collection and stop there — which settles ownership and settles nothing else. A will says who. It does not say what.

Still Twenty-Three

Michael Jordan hasn’t played an NBA game since 2003. Meanwhile, this month his boat fished the White Marlin Open in Ocean City, MD; earlier this year his race team’s driver opened the NASCAR season with three straight wins; and a flawless copy of his 1986 rookie changed hands for $347,700. The number keeps turning up.

Michael Jordan · 23XI Racing · White Marlin Open · Fleer · Heritage · Memory Lane

The Biggest Room

The 46th National Sports Collectors Convention drew well over a hundred thousand people to a hall outside Chicago. Among the sights: one of only three known unopened bricks of 1952 Topps at the Robert Edward Auctions booth — and a plain reminder of why the Mantle it doesn’t contain is worth millions.

The National · REA · Mickey Mantle · Willie Mays · Cal Ripken Jr. · Mike Schmidt · 1952 Topps

Both His Names

The summer’s great chase was pulled from a box in Florida on July 30 and sold within a day, privately, for a reported eleven million dollars. A note on what the card actually is, why that figure will not appear in our record, and the small matter of the card not yet existing.

Shohei Ohtani · Los Angeles Dodgers · Topps Chrome

Under One Roof

Heritage’s summer sale closed with three of the cards we track crossing the block together — a 1952 Mantle at $1,555,500, an ’86 Fleer Jordan in a perfect 10 at $347,700, and a 2000 Tom Brady rookie autograph at $1,113,250. Half a century of the game in one room.

Mickey Mantle · Michael Jordan · Tom Brady · Heritage · Topps · Fleer

In Good Company

The oldest auction house in the world hangs a Jordan beside its Old Masters; a fifty-year-old firm posts its biggest half ever; and a twenty-two-card subset from 1961 reminds us what all of it is actually about.

Sotheby's · Heritage · Jackie Robinson · Honus Wagner

Keepers

A milestone for the card the whole hobby measures itself against, a holy grail surfacing from a closet, and a modern superstar’s market finding its level. Three from a loud week.

Michael Jordan · Honus Wagner · Luka Doncic · Upper Deck · Fleer

The Vintage Market Runs Hot

Records for Clemente and Paige, and what a scorching June says about where the blue-chip hobby is placing its conviction.

Roberto Clemente · Satchel Paige · Mickey Mantle · Memory Lane · Topps