Give Now

Crazy Money Day! Mickey Mantle Card Sells for Millions

It’s Crazy Money Day!

My oldest boys used to collect baseball cards. We never dreamed of selling our cards for millions of dollars! Well, a Honus Wagner card sold for a record $7.25 million in a private sale earlier this year. It was considered to be the “Mona Lisa of baseball cards” with less than 50 authenticated copies in the industry. Recently, a card nearly doubled that. A 1952 Mickey Mantle card sold for a record $12.6 million at auction. It was in near-perfect condition. Here’s the backstory.

In 1986, a forklift operator told a Boston-area collector that a friend of his had found a box of Topps baseball cards in his dad’s attic. The collector contacted the friend and bought all 5,500 cards, including the  Mickey Mantle card, for $125,000. Then in 1991, Anthony Giordano, an entrepreneur in waste management, bought the card for $50,000 at a New York City show. Giordano who is 75 years old now, said he couldn’t stay awake for the auction, but he woke up to learn of the crazy result of the auction. There’s a documentary in the works called Four Perfect Corners. Now before you start digging through old cards, remember Solomon’s warning. “Do not wear yourself out to get rich; do not trust your own cleverness.
Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.” 
(Proverbs 23:4-5)

Whether or not you auction off any of your old cards, can I ask you to support Crown and this radio station? If you already do, thank you for your generosity! You can begin giving today at crown.org.