Hey Guys,
In 1957, as a 12-year old, I was lucky enough to buy two separate five packs of Topps baseball cards, the ones with the flat stick of double bubble gum inside, a day apart, at my favorite downtown corner bodega - Norman's..
What are the odds that each of those packs held inside a brand-new, 1956 Mickey Mantle Triple Crown Topps card inside?
Sure, I valued them as a NYC/Yankee fan, youngster baseball player would back then, but the modern collection industry had not yet become the Billion Dollar insanity it is today. Both cards probably ended up in shoe boxes in the top of a distant closet of my NYC past. Out of sight, out of mind. Never thought about them again.
Fast forward to 2019. My mother had a serious health issue that required many very expensive procedures costing way above what her insurance would cover. She called me for help (cash). Unfortunately, it was unusually tight for me at that time & I didn't have quite enough available cash to share & cover the costs.
Guessing, I told her to check inside my old sports foot locker if it was still out in her garage pile of junk which she'd schlepped around all those years because I didn't care about all the hoops trophies & no-hitter baseballs from high school anymore at all. And mom's are the gatherers, right?
She found a thick baseball folder in the locker that I remembered making for a school project (using 1/4" plywood covers that I hand painted (stick figure baseball players) & shoelaces for binding - what a craftsman & artist! (Ha). The project was just a kid memorializing the 1958 MLB All-Star Game I went to with my grandfather at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore that year. Man, I miss him so much!
I had cut out pictures of all the players in that game from the game program, taped them on the pages & covered them over with sticky clear plastic sleeves to preserve them.
It turns out that BOTH of those Triple Crown 1956 Mickey Mantle Tops cards were well-preserved & still inside that momento project, which I'd thought was long gone to history. Both were in MINT CONDITION because of those clear covers & the fact that they hadn't been handled once since I put them in my little All-Star book in 1958 - 61 years(!) before my mom found them again in that foot locker in her garage pile of junk.
To make a long story longer, in 2019, a collector paid me $40K+ for one of those special cards - which I gave to my mother to cover her procedures. The other Triple Crown '56 Mickey, I still have - somewhere around in this house - in MY pile of junk. I have no idea where it is though. Oh, the things people value, huh?...Sheesh!
Sometimes life is just like the great Mose Allison sang long ago, "Well it weren't too crazy. It was...just enough. Baby it was, just enough"
Father Demo
PS: I once got ejected from Yankee Stadium in '61 for sitting behind the Mick & the monuments out at 461' in dead center, for tossing ice cream sundae tops at the Mick on a playing-hookey, hot 'n humid, early summer kinda day, with the Yankees up by 17 runs! -father demo-
