Less than a week before Mickey Mantle made his major-league debut for the New York Yankees in 1951, he signed a contract from The Autographed Ball Corporation.
The deal allowed the company to sell baseballs stamped with Mantle's facsimile signature at concession and souvenir stands throughout the league. For each ball sold, Mantle would receive a penny.
The Autographed Ball Corporation, founded in 1947 by Dick Culler, utilized a new device allowing balls to be stamped six times (on each panel) with multiple autograph on each stamp. As Dick Culler Jr. explained to the Winston-Salem Journal in 2014, “The result was a baseball covered with the replica autographs of every player and manager of a particular team.”
The contract is now up at auction, and, ironically, despite its purpose of allowing a company to produce fake signatures of Mantle’s name, it actually boasts one of the most desirable Mickey Mantle signatures in the hobby.
Autograph collectors have long placed a premium on early career or rookie-era autographs.
A Mantle-signed ball dated to 1956, described as possibly “the finest early Mantle single in the entirety of the hobby,” sold for a whopping $12,600 in 2018.
This week, another single-signed Mantle ball sold for less than $500, one of countless he signed later in his life during his frequent visits to conventions and card shows.
Considering the date of the contract, which was so early Mantle was still planning to don No. 6 (he swapped to 7 after returning from the minors later in his rookie season), the contract offers an elusive rookie-era autograph from the future Hall of Famer.
While the contract’s relative lack of significance will prevent it from smashing any records, it’s still a vehicle for a dated autograph from the most sought-after era of Mantle signatures. The same piece sold in 2012 for $2,151.
Gotta Have Rock and Roll placed a starting bid of $1,000 on the lot with lofty estimates of $30,000 to $50,000.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.