Auctions
Collector thrilled by amazing discovery of historic 1952 card with Mickey Mantle’s first on-card autograph
Barry Walner and his older brother were enamored with baseball in the 1950s.
The two boys from Hackensack, N.J. enjoyed flipping through the latest issue of Sport magazine and cutting out the pictures of their favorite baseball players. They would then send the pictures to those athletes requesting an autograph.
The brothers’ success rate of getting a returned signature was pretty high.
Walner was about 9 years old when the 1952 Bowman baseball set was released. He bought a few packs—honestly, he wanted the stick of gum as much as the cards—and hit a second-year card of a young, up-and-coming New York Yankees player named Mickey Mantle.
The 1952 Bowman 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, addressed to “Mickey Mantle c/o New York Yankees.”
“I knew there was a lot of buzz about Mickey Mantle being the next Joe DiMaggio,” Walner said. “At that point in time, he had a reasonably good rookie season but I don’t think it was great. But there was a lot of talk about him being the next Joe DiMaggio. So, I had this card and I sent it to him in an envelope with a letter telling him how much I liked him.”
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Only about four or five weeks went by when Walner received a piece of mail back from the Yankees’ office. Mantle had autographed Walner’s 1952 Bowman card in blue ballpoint pencil with exquisite penmanship. Mantle’s real autograph nearly matched the facsimile signature right below it.
At that time, Walner wasn’t surprised he received the Mantle autographed card.
“My brother had been doing this for a while and he was getting them back,” Walner said. “So, I did it and I got it back. I didn’t even think it was a big deal when I got it. Actually, it wasn’t a big deal when I got it.”
Fast forward 73 years. With the Mantle card still in Walner’s possession, he finally discovered what a big deal the signature is to the hobby.
AMAZING DISCOVERY
In November 2025, Walner, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, traveled to visit family in Chicago.
Prior to the trip, Walner’s wife told him about a venture their nephew, Justin Hirsch, had recently gotten into. Earlier in the year, Hirsch started Rabbit Hole Auctions, a niche and “boutiquey” auction house that consigns items that are affordable to everyday collectors.
Walner was intrigued to chat with Hirsch at the family gathering about his vintage autograph collection.
Prior to an extended family dinner one night, Walner told Hirsch he would like to sit next to him, and the two were soon engrossed in conversation.
“For about two hours, it was like nobody else was at the dinner,” Walner said. “There were 35 people there.”
Walner shared with Hirsch the background of getting the Mantle on-card autograph and how he had held onto it for 70-plus years.
When Walner received the card back from Mantle, he had promptly taped it to his scrapbook along with all his other autographs.
“They were just in one of those little cardboard type scrapbooks, and that’s where I put all my pictures,” said Walner, who is now 83 years old. “I did this for a number of years.”
Fortunately, when Walner went off to college a number of years later, his mom didn’t throw away his collection.
Walner loved that scrapbook. As a new husband and father in the late 1960s, he took his collection with him to his family’s first residence.
“I had it all the time,” Walner said. “Every now and then when somebody would be at the house and talk about baseball, I’d bring it out. As I got older, I started to bring it out more often, because I would tell these folks my age that would come to dinner, ‘You’ve got to see this thing.’”
Walner told Hirsch the card remained in the scrapbook for about 30 years. Around 1982, Walner removed the tape from the top and bottom of the card and placed it into a plastic protector that would have been used for sheets of paper. Walner’s scrapbook also contained an additional 50 signed photos, the majority Baseball Hall of Famers, including Bob Feller and Stan Musial.
A few years later, Walner realized his card might be special since Mantle had turned out to be one of the best baseball players of all time. He transferred the relic into a card holder, where it remained for 40 years.
Walner tried to provide Hirsch with as much detail as possible about his card. However, he couldn’t recall for sure if it was a 1952 Bowman. He just remembered it had a facsimile signature along with the real one.
Walner shared with Hirsch that he brought the Mantle to a card show in San Francisco around 2000. A dealer told Walner it was relatively worthless because the card was in rough shape with tape and the autograph actually “made it less valuable.”
At that time, book value placed the card’s worth at about $2,500. But the dealer thought it was more in the range of $1,000-$1,500.
It wasn’t until 25 years later that Walner learned what it might realistically be worth.
“Justin says to me, ‘What do you think it’s worth?’ And I said, ‘Maybe $2,500,’” Walner said. “He said, ‘You know, if it is what I think it is, we’re probably talking five figures.’ I said, ‘Holy cow!’”
Added Hirsch: “I was figuring out what it was, but I had to absolutely kind of keep my enthusiasm in check and also just to kind of be conservative without having seen the auto. It was almost like time stood still, because you only read about this stuff.”
A TRUE 1/1
All throughout the conversation with Hirsch at the dinner table, it was eating Walner up that he didn’t have a picture of the card to show.
Walner said when he returned to California, he would text images to Hirsch. Immediately upon getting home a few days later, Walner sent Hirsch a late-night message.
Upon seeing the card, Hirsch responded: “‘That, Barry, is an absolute beauty.’”
The next morning, Walner texted Hirsch 25-30 photos of his other autographs.
“I couldn’t believe it was what I had thought, but it was better,” Hirsch said about the Mantle card. “I actually did a double or triple take and look at which autograph was real, because it looked so much like the facsimile. I know Mantle autographs. I’ve got a bunch of Mantle autographs. Fortunately, because I’ve spent years in the hobby, I’ve got great relationships.”
Hirsch reached out to Mantle autograph aficionado 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.
Cirulnick provided spectacular exemplars of the evolution of Mantle’s signatures over the years. He pretty conclusively pinpointed that the on-card autograph was done in 1952 or early ’53 because of Mantle’s signature style. By July 1953, Mantle had changed his autograph into more of a loop on the M on Mickey, along with other traits.
“You can see the ’51 and ’52 Mantle auto, Barry’s arguably looks more so like a late ’51, hence the summer of ’52,” Hirsch said. “It’s not a ’53.”
The next step in the process was getting the card graded. It was hand delivered to third-party grader PSA, and the card came back with a quick turnaround time. It received a 1 for the card and an 8 for the autograph.
The Mantle on-card autograph is an exquisite specimen with its bright blue color.
“Ballpoint signatures on baseball cards when you study them always fade but this one had not seen the light of day,” Hirsch said. “It’s also extremely rare to have an autograph intact with zero fade. If you zoom in on the card, it looks like it was signed three weeks ago.”
From all the research Hirsch has done, he believes Walner’s Mantle is the earliest known on-card signature of the Yankees great.
“We’re giving the facts to the public now and nobody has come out of the woodwork to say, ‘I have one earlier.’ Nobody,” Hirsch said.
On Jan. 31 of this year, Heritage Auctions sold a similar 1952 Bowman Mantle autographed card. It is graded PSA 1 for the card with a PSA 9 autograph. The signature, however, is circa 1955. It sold for $91,500.
With news circulating around the hobby about Walner’s amazing Mantle on-card auto, the valuation on the piece has definitely blown past any expectations from Walner.
“We’ve been told it’s a six-figure card,” Hirsch said.
The card has it all: the provenance from being pack-pulled and kept by the same original owner; and it features the earliest known Mantle signature.
“Now I’m thinking, geez, if we’ve got a one-of-one, that is amazing,” Walner said. “This is really special.”
With the rise of prospecting for young talent by card collectors, Walner was an original prospector before prospecting was a thing.
“I didn’t know I was prospecting,” Walner said. “I didn’t know that the card could someday be worth $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000. I just knew that this guy was going to probably be a great player. If they said he was going to be the next Joe DiMaggio, the last Joe DiMaggio was pretty damn good and he was still around.”
HEADING TO AUCTION
Walner decided to consign the card with Rabbit Hole Auctions to run in its next auction.
Rabbit Hole held its inaugural auction last September-October. The Walner Mantle will definitely be the biggest item the company has auctioned off thus far. The rest of Walner’s autograph pieces—which are also slabbed by PSA—will also be available in the auction. It will be called “The Barry Walner Collection.”
“When we talk about Rabbit Hole, it’s about the unique storytelling,” Hirsch said. “We’re all about cards and memorabilia but we’re about provenance and the story—this is the essence.
“I told Barry, ‘Regardless of what happens, we are going to have so much fun along the way sharing your story.’ I’m less focused on money and monetization and more focused on journey and storytelling and sharing this.”
Hirsch and Walner are headed to the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago at the end of July to further spread the word about the amazing Mantle card.
The guys know it will be a highly sought-after piece since it touches so many segments of the hobby: those who collect Mantle, Yankees, autographs, and vintage items.
Walner is blown away by the prospect that he might own a piece with such historical significance. The journey he has experienced since last November has really rejuvenated him.
“I have not had more fun than I have had in the last six months than probably in the last 25 years or 30 years,” Walner said. “I am so enthralled with what we’re doing now. I can’t stop talking about it. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m just lifted up and I’m as happy as a lark over this.”
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