The chase for the most wanted sports trading card of 2026 is over.
A few months after Topps announced that the company’s 2026 Series 1 baseball release will feature the treasured 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, a card redemption listing appeared on the eBay Goldin-owned sports collectibles auction site.
Topps’ announcement on February 10 confirmed that the original card, designed to honor the company’s 75th year of making baseball cards, will not be included in the package to preserve its condition.
entitles one to a standard, original version of the 1952 Tops
Mickey Mantle card. Goldin
“Before anyone panics, the actual card will not be included in the package,” Topps said in a Feb. 10 Facebook post. “To preserve its condition, one lucky collector will receive a salvage card that can be used as a historic original.”
A representative for Tops confirmed to The Post that the listing is legitimate and that the company was “recently” notified of its removal.
Collectors hoping to find gold were actually playing the lottery rather than odds of finding it in one of our 40 million pockets, according to Yahoo Sports.
As of late Thursday afternoon, the listing has a high bid of $36,000 with eight bids placed — but that number is set to rise significantly.
The 1952 Mantle is considered by many to be one of the most popular sports cards in existence, with Professional Sports Authenticator calling it “arguably, the most important baseball card in the entire industry.”
Much of the card’s value stems from Mickey Mantle’s Hall of Fame career with the Yankees, its place in Topps’s flagship set and the rarest of copies that survive after thousands of copies were dumped in the Hudson River.
The use of Topps guarantees the card collector a limited edition version – but even lower quality original versions are sold at attractive prices.
The April 29 sale of a 1952 Mantle card, scored 1 by PSA, sold for $35,000 while a week earlier, a PSA 4 card went for $132,000, per the company.
About four years ago, a 1952 version of the Mantle card scored a 9.5 at SGC, and sold for $12.5 million.
The year before that, a version of the card scored a 9 by PSA and sold for $5.2 million.
“Based on our research, this is the best looking 1952 Tops Mantle PSA 9 in existence,” said Jesse Craig, director of business development at PWCC Marketplace overseeing the sale, in a press release at the time.
Topps did not disclose the status of the limited edition card, but it will have a very high price regardless.
The redemption card expires on February 11, 2036.
