It was the 1952 Topps, the holy grail of the hobby ... The most recent sale of any 2.5, one graded by PSA, sold for $45,900 on March 6.

In the case of the Mantle 1952 Topps card, the top price paid for a signed example is $288,000 for a PSA 2/Auto 10 in January 2023. Most recently, a PSA 1/Auto 8 sold for $264,000 in August 2024.

Since the adoption of card grading in the early 1990s, many collectors have utilized numerical grades as a representation of ...