The mere sight of certain baseball cards can make a collector’s heart race. That’s especially the case when it’s in their possession, but all those nice feelings can go away in an instant if it ends up being a fake.
According to PSA, 1952 Mickey Mantle cards were submitted for grading 181 times in 2025. However, 112 of them came back labeled inauthentic. That feels like a very high number, but for the most iconic card in the hobby, it’s equal parts shocking…and not shocking.
Editor’s Note: Looking to Sell Sports Cards? Here’s How to Do It Quickly & Easily
What This Really Means for 1952 Mickey Mantle Cards
The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 was sent to PSA 181 times in 2025. Of those 181, 112 of them were deemed inauthentic. pic.twitter.com/G49FjGZICt
— PSAcard (@PSAcard) February 11, 2026
It’s not surprising at all that the ’52 Mantle is a frequently counterfeited card, and the methods have only gotten more sophisticated over time. Any ungraded examples being publicly offered for sale deserve serious scrutiny. Beyond just producing fake cards, some counterfeiters have figured out ways to fool anyone who doesn’t know exactly what to look for by swapping out authentic cards that have already been graded.
When a card is worth anywhere from $15,000 on its worst day to $12.6 million on its best, the incentive to fake one is enormous. Of course, the fakes exist. Of course, submissions are getting kicked back at eye-popping rates. The hobby’s biggest treasure will also be its biggest target.
The upside is that the 69 authentic examples that cleared PSA in 2025 are exactly what they claim to be, and they’re worth every dollar the market assigns to them. The fact that genuine raw copies are still surfacing more than 70 years after they were printed is wild, but it also means the due diligence required before buying one is extremely important.
The Eye-Popping Sales That Make This Card Worth Faking
The record for this card — a near-perfect SGC 9.5 example — sold for $12.6 million through Heritage Auctions in August 2022. That single sale changed the entire landscape of what a baseball card could be worth and turned the ’52 Mantle into a mainstream cultural reference point rather quickly.
But it’s not just the elite grades that are generating serious dollars. A PSA 5.5 signed copy cleared $1,067,500 at Heritage Auctions in August 2025. A PSA 1.5 with an auto grade of 8 hammered at $945,500 that December.
Condition Barely Matters When It Comes to This Card
The thing about the ’52 Mantle that never gets old? Even the beat-up examples are worth serious cash. An ultra-rare pink-highlighted Mantle (complete with apparent trimming and paper loss) sold for $17,400 through Huggins and Scott’s Summer 2025 auction. Someone scribbled on it with a pink marker, and it still fetched nearly $20,000.
Then there were the two heavily worn examples that sold at Miller & Miller Auctions in Canada for a combined CA$51,330 (over $37,000 USD). One was graded at a PSA 1, and the other had been trimmed with scissors to fit in a binder. Neither looked like much, but it’s still valuable because it’s a 1952 Mantle card.
When it comes to this specific card, there’s a clear indicator of what matters the most. You don’t necessarily need perfection — you need authenticity.
An Authentic 1952 Mantle Is Hiding in 2026 Topps Series 1
On the eve of Topps’ 2026 Series 1 Baseball release, the company announced that a random pack has a redemption inside it for an authentic 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card. Once that lucky collector pulls the redemption card, it can be exchanged for the real thing in its original and completely unaltered form.
This announcement came as Topps is celebrating the brand’s 75th anniversary of producing baseball cards. Considering a PSA 1 example can still sell for a sizeable amount of money, whoever pulls that redemption card is in for a genuinely life-changing pack rip. Go buy some packs, folks. While the odds are slim, they’re not zero.
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