1956 Topps Mickey Mantle #135

Topps gets Mantle back

For two years Topps had to make baseball cards without Mickey Mantle. He was signed exclusively to the rival Bowman company, so the 1954 and 1955 Topps sets went out without the most popular young player in the game. Early in 1956 Topps bought Bowman, removing its only major competitor and beginning a run of market dominance that lasted until 1981, when Fleer and Donruss received licenses to make their own baseball sets.

The purchase did not hand Topps every player at once. Contracts that players had signed with Bowman had to be renegotiated, and some stars, Stan Musial most notably, did not appear in a Topps set until 1958. Mantle did come back. Card #135 was his first Topps card since 1953, and it would be his last card that used artwork instead of a photograph.

The 1956 set has 340 numbered cards plus two unnumbered checklists, and it was the first Topps set to include checklists and team cards. It came out in four series: cards 1-100, 101-180, 181-260 and 261-340. Mantle's card sits in the second series. Cards were sold in one-card penny packs and six-card nickel packs, 24 nickel packs to a box, and gumball machines of the day dispensed a card and a gumball for a cent.

A grin and a leap at the wall

Like the 1955 set before it, the 1956 card is horizontal, about 3 3/4 by 2 5/8 inches, and these were the last oversized cards Topps made. Each player card pairs a close-up head shot with a larger action or posed scene behind it and a facsimile signature in black. The fronts are less glossy than the 1955 cards and have a grainier look.

On Mantle's card the portrait shows him smiling broadly, and the action scene has him going up an outfield wall to take away a home run. Collectors regularly call it one of the most attractive Mantle cards ever made. It is also the key to a set with little rookie power: the 1956 set's notable cards include Ted Williams, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, but its 13 rookie cards are led by Luis Aparicio.

The back carries the player's vital information at the top, three cartoon panels on his career in the middle, and his previous-season and career statistics at the bottom. Topps printed the cards 110 to a sheet, 10 by 11.

The Triple Crown year

Mantle was born October 20, 1931, in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, and named after the Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane. His father, Elvin 'Mutt' Mantle, worked in the lead and zinc mines around Commerce, Oklahoma, and taught his son to hit from both sides of the plate. Yankees scout Tom Greenwade signed him in 1949 for $140 a month and a $1,500 bonus, and he debuted in the majors on April 17, 1951.

1956 was the season the card's first buyers watched unfold. Mantle hit .353 with 52 home runs and 130 runs batted in, leading the majors in all three and winning the Triple Crown. He also led the league with 132 runs scored and a .705 slugging percentage, posted an OPS+ of 210, and won his first American League Most Valuable Player award. He would win it again in 1957 and 1962.

The Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers met in the World Series, October 3-10, 1956. In Game 5 on October 8, Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history; Mantle supplied a fourth-inning home run and a running catch of a Gil Hodges line drive in left-center field. The Yankees won Game 7, 9-0, on October 10. It was the last World Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, who moved west after the 1957 season.

Gray backs, white backs and the condition puzzle

Cards 1 through 180 in the 1956 set were printed on two kinds of stock, so they turn up with either gray or white backs; cards 181 through 340 are all gray. In the first series white backs are the more common, while in the second series, where Mantle sits, gray backs dominate. One collector with three graded sets put the second-series ratio at 12 to 15 gray backs for every white back. PSA's own Mantle counts in October 2024 showed roughly 9.5 gray backs for every white back.

PSA began noting the back color on its holders only around October 2008, so older population figures do not separate them cleanly. White backs are scarcer and generally sell for a premium, while gray backs are often seen with better eye appeal. White-back cards also seem to be more brittle, and no white-back Mantle had been graded PSA 9 as of October 2024.

The card is not one of Mantle's hard issues to find, but it is hard to find well centered, and some 1956 cards were rough-cut at the factory. Rough edges do not lower the technical grade but put some buyers off. PSA's census lists five gray-back copies at PSA 10, and a June 2020 auction description noted that only five copies graded higher than its PSA 9.

What the top copies have brought

The highest recorded sale is a gray-back PSA 10 at $360,000 in May 2017. At PSA 9, a copy carrying an estimate of $35,000 and up sold at auction on June 10, 2020, for $40,063 including the buyer's premium. Within about a year PSA 9 copies were reported at $175,000 in August 2021, $150,000 and $137,000 in October 2021, and $148,700 in January 2022.

Lower grades show how much condition matters. Gray-back PSA 8 copies were reported at $15,900 to $19,600 during 2024, and PSA 5 copies at $2,500 to $3,200. A white-back PSA 8 brought $20,200 in September 2017 and a white-back PSA 7 $19,800 in April 2022, both above gray-back copies of similar grade.

Topps returned to the design 50 years later. At the 2006 National Sports Collectors Convention in Anaheim, it handed VIP guests 'Cards That Never Were' made to 1955 and 1956 specifications, including a #344 Mickey Mantle Triple Crown card in the 1956 style.

The numbers

1956 season

150 G, 652 PA, 533 AB, 132 R, 188 H, 22 2B, 5 3B, 52 HR, 130 RBI, 10 SB, 112 BB, 99 SO, .353 BA, .464 OBP, .705 SLG, 210 OPS+

1956 honors

Triple Crown (led the majors in BA, HR and RBI); American League MVP; also led the league in runs and slugging

1955 season

147 G, 638 PA, 517 AB, 121 R, 158 H, 25 2B, 11 3B, 37 HR, 99 RBI, 8 SB, 113 BB, 97 SO, .306 BA, .431 OBP, .611 SLG, 180 OPS+

Career

18 seasons, 8,102 AB, 2,415 H, 536 HR, .298 BA

MVP awards

3 (1956, 1957, 1962)

World Series titles

7

Hall of Fame

Elected 1974, first ballot, 322 of 365 ballots

Timeline

1. Oct 20, 1931

   Mickey Mantle is born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma.

2. 1949

   Yankees scout Tom Greenwade signs Mantle for $140 a month and a $1,500 bonus.

3. Apr 17, 1951

   Mantle debuts with the New York Yankees.

4. 1953

   Mantle appears on a Topps card, his last before two Bowman-exclusive years.

5. 1956

   Topps buys Bowman early in the year and issues its 340-card set; Mantle's #135 is in the second series.

6. 1956

   Mantle wins the Triple Crown and his first American League MVP award.

7. Oct 8, 1956

   Mantle homers and makes a running catch in Don Larsen's World Series perfect game.

8. Oct 10, 1956

   The Yankees beat Brooklyn 9-0 in Game 7 to win the World Series.

9. 1974

   Mantle is elected to the Hall of Fame on his first ballot.

10. Aug 13, 1995

    Mantle dies in Dallas at 63.

11. Jul 2006

    Topps hands out a 'Cards That Never Were' #344 Mantle Triple Crown card in 1956 style at the National convention in Anaheim.

12. Oct 2008

    Around this time PSA begins noting gray or white backs on 1956 Topps holders.

13. May 2017

    A gray-back PSA 10 sells for $360,000.

14. Jun 10, 2020

    A PSA 9 sells at auction for $40,063.

15. Aug 2021

    A gray-back PSA 9 is reported sold for $175,000.

16. Oct 2024

    PSA's count of graded 1956 Topps Mantles passes 9,500.

The world in 1956

• Feb 22, 1956

  Elvis Presley enters the U.S. charts with 'Heartbreak Hotel.'

• Jun 29, 1956

  President Eisenhower signs the Federal-Aid Highway Act, creating the Interstate Highway System.

• Jun 30, 1956

  A TWA Constellation and a United DC-7 collide over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 aboard.

• Jul 25, 1956

  The SS Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm in fog near Nantucket and sinks the next morning.

• Jul 30, 1956

  Congress authorizes 'In God We Trust' as the national motto.

• Sep 9, 1956

  Elvis Presley first appears on The Ed Sullivan Show.

• Nov 6, 1956

  Eisenhower is reelected over Adlai Stevenson.

• Nov 13, 1956

  The Supreme Court upholds Browder v. Gayle, ending bus segregation in Montgomery.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1956 Topps Mickey Mantle #135 is number 44 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (20 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Topps had no Mantle cards in 1954 or 1955 because he was signed exclusively to Bowman; Topps bought Bowman early in 1956.
• The 1956 card is the last Mantle card to use artwork instead of a photograph.
• One history of the 1956 set calls Mantle the first switch hitter to lead a league in batting since 1889.
• In the second series, where Mantle sits, gray-back cards outnumber white backs by roughly 12 or 15 to 1, by one collector's count.
• PSA began noting the back color on 1956 Topps holders only around October 2008.
• In 1956 a gumball machine could dispense a baseball card and a gumball for one cent.