Auctions
Autograph expert questions legitimacy of PSA-authenticated 1952 Mickey Mantle signature
The legitimacy of an authenticated autograph from MLB and hobby legend Mickey Mantle has come under question.
In early July, SCD reported that an autograph obtained by a young collector in 1952 of the New York Yankees legend was deemed authentic by third-party grading company Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). Signed on Mantle’s 1952 Bowman card during his second season, it is believed to be one of the earliest known period on-card Mantle autographs.
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However, autograph authentication expert Steve Grad has come out and stated that the signature wasn’t inked by Mantle. Grad posted an 18-minute video on his Facebook page and other social media channels disputing the autograph.
Grad asserts that the card was most likely signed by someone within the Yankees organization; the autograph is referred to as a “secretarial.”
But despite Grad's evaluation and assertion, the card is now headed to auction.
UPDATE: Chicago-based Rabbit Hole Auctions had posted the card on its website to sell in its next month-long auction on Oct. 11. But the collector and Rabbit Hole officials have now consigned the card to Goldin after taking the card to The National and meeting with Goldin offficials.
The card will be featured in an upcoming Vintage Elite Auction at Goldin.
Grad, who was an authenticator at PSA from March 2002 to September 2016, has plenty of exemplars to back up his claim.
“I’ll let the autograph speak for itself, and everybody can make their own judgment,” Grad told SCD. “As a general frame of comparison, on my video, I showed people ’51, ’52 and ’53 signatures all dated. I have his signature from spring training in 1952 documented three times, then I have it all during the season on team balls and cuts. I could even go into ’53, where I could date too and do all that. In ’52 specifically, I can go from the beginning of the season, which is spring training, through the season and then to the end of the year, Oct. 17, which was 10 days after the World Series.
“This signature doesn’t fit any style that I’ve ever seen Mantle sign. I think it’s somebody screwing around—probably a clubhouse attendant or somebody that worked for the team or a bat boy. But it does stuff that Mantle’s signature never does. Like ever. Period.”
Collectors, the parent company of PSA, is standing firm that the autograph it authenticated is legitimate.
“PSA stands behind the autograph,” Collectors CEO Nat Turner told SCD. “Steve, of course, can have his own opinion. But that’s not the opinion of PSA.”
Turner declined to elaborate on the reasons why PSA believes the autograph was penned by Mantle.
AMAZING PROVENANCE
Caught in the middle of this uncertainty is collector Barry Walner. When he was about 9 years old, Walner opened some packs of newly released 1952 Bowman baseball and pulled a Mantle card.
The card featured a facsimile signature of Mantle, but Walner wanted the real thing. So, Walner decided to write Mantle a letter that summer to ask for an autograph on his card. As if it was just another autograph request, Walner mailed the card to Yankee Stadium. About five weeks later, Walner received the card back with Mantle’s autograph.
Fast forward 73 years to 2025 when Walner, now 83, was telling his nephew, Justin Hirsch, about his autographed Mantle card he still owned. Astonished by what he heard, Hirsch had just recently founded Rabbit Hole Auctions and helped Walner realize he was holding what he believed to be a valuable treasure. Walner had the card authenticated by PSA and decided he would consign it to Rabbit Hole Auctions.
Hirsch was told the Mantle card could go for $100,000 at auction. Grad said that if the autograph were authentic, it could fetch $250,000-$500,000.
“When I first discovered that my Mantle card might be considerably valuable, it was explained to me the importance of needing to get it authenticated,” Walner told SCD. “My understanding was that PSA is the largest and most respected sports authenticating firm in the world, so it was an easy decision to go with them. Both the card and the signature came back authenticated, the card a 1 and the autograph an 8.
“As to the current situation, PSA has already reiterated that they stand behind their autograph authentication. If I or the market cannot confidently rely on PSA’s authentication process and standards, there are significantly larger industry issues at hand.”
Walner does not plan on seeking the opinion of any other authentication companies in the hobby.
Prior to sending the card to PSA, Hirsch did his due diligence and research on Mantle autographs. He reached out to Mantle autograph guru Matt Cirulnick, who founded the website Eye Appeal, Inc., to see if he could provide a definitive time frame in which Mantle signed the card.
MANTLE EXAMPLES
Grad—who launched his own autograph authentication company, Grad Authentication, at the end of June—has been an authenticator in the hobby for 24 years. After his time at PSA, he was the principal authenticator at Beckett Grading Service for nine and a half years up until earlier this year. Grad has also served as the main autograph expert for the last 13 years on the hit TV show “Pawn Stars.”
In looking at Walner’s 1952 Bowman autographed card, Grad said there are a lot of inconsistencies. Mantle’s signature throughout the ’52 season from start to finish was “relatively all the same.” He added that Mantle’s autograph in ’53 went through a few modifications, but it’s on par with the ’52 examples.
“There’s stuff in that signature that he just never did,” Grad said about the ’52 Bowman autograph in question. “I would go as far as saying from 1947 to 1995, he’s never done these things. But on this card, he does it, or somebody does it.”
Grad added that even in 1951 when Mantle was a rookie, he had similar characteristics in his signature that he carried all the way until his death in 1995.
Grad, who has over 2,500 Mantle autograph exemplars on file, confidently pinpoints certain parts of Mantle’s signature on the 1952 Bowman card that don’t match any of his samples. One of the most glaring is the “a” in the autograph.
“He’s never done an ‘a’ like that in a high post,” Grad said. “On the ‘a,’ the overlapping is wrong. It’s formed wrong, as well, for that era. It’s formed wrong for any era of Mantle.
“The gap between the ‘M’ and the ‘a’ in his last name, he didn’t do that, ever. Mickey Mantle starts his ‘i,’ especially in ’51 and ’52, through the post on the downward ‘M,’ always. I’ve never seen Mantle sign like this. I don’t understand it.”
In the video Grad released to the public, he shows an authentic 1951 Bowman card signed by Mantle in ’52. Grad authenticated that card when he worked at PSA. A friend of Grad’s bought it through Hunt Auctions about 20 years ago along with a Willie Mays card for $1,100.
It’s a clean copy and one of the earliest on-card autographs Grad has seen of Mantle’s from ’52.
“I don’t know what PSA was looking at to determine [the 1952 Bowman autograph] was real,” Grad said. “If you go through exemplars, and I know they have my old ones and they have their own, you could not say that Mantle ever signed that. Could I say a clubhouse attendant or a batboy? Yeah, no problem. But Mantle? No.
“I don’t see a resemblance between the card and his genuine signature,” Grad added on his YouTube video. “I don’t see any evidence that Mantle signed it. It doesn’t match up to anything that I have seen on record. I have never seen some of the inconsistencies in this card and his signature in his entire career, and I’m talking from ’47 to ’95, I have never seen him do most of this stuff but all of a sudden we have a variant, one-time signature. And it doesn’t match the clubhouse signature, it doesn’t match that at all, either.”
Given his background with PSA, Grad knows some people might question his motives behind claiming that PSA is wrong for authenticating the card.
“I don’t hold a vendetta against anybody, nothing at all,” Grad said. “I want to point stuff out to people that you have to be careful what you’re doing.”
