The Mickey Mantle Ghost Card No-One Talks About
Mickey Mantle is a mainstay in baseball, aging like fine wine in both the stat lines and in the card community. Mantle’s most famous baseball card, the 1952 Topps #311, is widely considered the “Holy Grail” of sports collecting. That ‘52 Topps #311 brought in a massive $12.6 million at a Heritage Auction event in 2022 – although that card was an SGC 9.5 grade. Nonetheless that specific card for Mantle can easily carry the buyer having to write a paycheck upwards of a million dollars, depending on its condition.
Several years after the 1952 Topps card was produced, Mantle would get another card that still stays under the radar for the most part today.
Mickey Mantle’s 1957 Topps #95 showcases an error that Topps has never addressed still to this day some 69 years later. In the background of ‘The Mick’ taking a close-up swing is seen to be a shadowy, human-like figure off to the right of Mantle. The figure has been long-dubbed as the “Ghost of Babe Ruth,” however it is likely a photographic impression or even someone who was passing by during the shot.
It is not known what exact camera the photo was taken on, as Topps commonly used team archive photos during that era of card manufacturing. The most common camera used for baseball, particularly baseball photos in the mid-1950s, was the Graflex Speed Graphic – which contributed to the majority of baseball cards made a season before in 1956.
According to eBay, Mantle’s 1957 Topps #95 ‘ghost’ card carries a price range in the low-to-mid hundreds into the low thousand dollar range if graded in good condition – making it a solid pickup for the average collector that wants to add a Mantle to their collection.
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