There was an interesting lot that sold on Yahoo Auctions yesterday. It was a fourteen card lot of bromides that featured a mix of Japanese players and players from the New York Yankees from the 1950s. The Yankees cards included some very big names - Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and Hank Bauer all had individual cards.
I've never seen these cards, which are blank-backed, before. Engel's guide lists some bromides featuring Yankees players from the 50s (like JBR 134), but I don't think these are from that. I'm not super knowledgeable about 1950s bromides though, perhaps somebody else might recognize these? If not, I wonder if they might be "new" discoveries.
Sadly but predictably I was never an actual contender to win this lot and was watching it mainly just out of curiosity. It sold for a little over 1.3 million Yen (about 10,000$ US at current exchange rates). Not being in that class of collector myself I have no idea if that was a good deal or not, but whoever won it got a pretty nice set of cards.
First time seeing a vintage Japanese Mantle or Ford card. With that kind of closing price... gotta imagine these are pretty rare.
ReplyDeleteMight be the only copies of these out there!
DeleteWhile I definitely think that these are super cool, I'm surprised that they went for so much in Japan, and don't know what they would go for here. First of all, cards of foreign players usually go for less than domestic counterparts. Is Mickey Mantle that popular in Japan?
ReplyDeleteAs for their value in the US, just as cards of foreign players usually go for less, so do foreign issues of domestic players. Think of how Sanella Ruths compare to Goudeys. My inclination is to think that they would go for less than other super-rare American issues of the same players. But then what do I know, someone was willing to bet $10k on them.
It went for a lot "in Japan" but I wouldn't be surprised if it was bought by someone outside of Japan. I think a lot of the market for Japanese cards of American players (vintage ones like this at least) is in the US, not Japan. With all the proxy services out there its not hard for American buyers to bid on YJA stuff (that used to be the case like 10 years ago, the price of everything on there, not just cards, exploded once the proxy services started business.
DeleteThis one might be different from the Sanella Ruth (of which many copies exist), as this might be the only copy of this Mantle out there. There are probably several wealthy Mantle collectors out there (all you need is two) who would be willing to bid a lot for something like this.
Engel lists a couple Mantle cards but this isn't either of them. I doubt these are all from a single set since there's a mix of black and white and color cards and some of the cards are different sizes. The text on the Yankees players varies too - the Jerry Coleman card has the team name in parenthesis after it and the Whitey Ford card has his position as well as his name.
ReplyDeleteCool cards but I can't imagine spending $10K on baseball cards.
Yeah, I couldn't find these in Engel's guide either but I was wondering if I might have missed it somehow. That is a good point that the text and sizes (and coloring) vary, this might be just a jumble of seperately issued bromides.
DeleteVery cool and seems highly likely these were purchased by an American buyer. Definitely looks like several sets mixed together in there, but seems like a good price to me on some of these possible one-of-kind bromides.
ReplyDeleteI think it was probably an American buyer too. I'm not a Mickey mantle collector but looking at what his cards are going for these days, this might not have been a bad deal for the buyer.
DeleteI don't think that Mickey, or the guy in the background, were ready to have their photo taken.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm quite curious about who that other guy on the Mantle card is!
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