How many Mickey Mantle rookie cards are there?

The number printed and the number that survive are not known. PSA's total for Mantle's rookie card, the 1951 Bowman #253, was 2,530 graded copies in a count published in April 2026. Ungraded copies and copies graded by other companies are on top of that.

Is the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle a rookie card?

No. Mantle's rookie card is the 1951 Bowman #253, which PSA calls his only recognized rookie card. The 1952 Topps #311 is his first Topps card and the more famous of the two.

How many 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards exist?

The total is not known. PSA had graded 2,075 copies as of a November 2025 count reported by Sports Illustrated. As of October 6, 2026, PSA lists three PSA 10s and six PSA 9s.

What is the most expensive Mickey Mantle card ever sold?

A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 graded SGC 9.5 sold for $12.6 million at Heritage Auctions in August 2022. The record for his 1951 Bowman rookie card is $3.192 million for a PSA 9 at Memory Lane, reported in December 2022.

How Many Mickey Mantle Rookie Cards Exist?

Q: Were 1952 Topps cards really dumped in the ocean?

Topps executive Sy Berger said he had 300 to 500 unsold cases of 1952 Topps high-series cards dumped in the Atlantic Ocean around 1959 or 1960. That is his own account, and Sports Illustrated wrote in November 2025 that the story has never stood up to serious scrutiny.

December 17, 2022 Richard Weiss

Last updated: October 6, 2026

Key Takeaways

Mickey Mantle has one recognized rookie card: the 1951 Bowman #253. The 1952 Topps #311 is his first Topps card, not his rookie card.
Nobody knows how many of either card were printed or still exist. The only hard counts are grading company population reports.
PSA's total for the 1951 Bowman was 2,530 in a count published in April 2026. Its total for the 1952 Topps was 2,075 in a count published in November 2025.
As of October 6, 2026, PSA lists one PSA 10 and nine PSA 9s of the 1951 Bowman, and three PSA 10s and six PSA 9s of the 1952 Topps.
The record sale is $12.6 million for a 1952 Topps Mantle graded SGC 9.5 at Heritage Auctions in August 2022.

Which card is the rookie?
How many exist?
PSA population by grade
Why the 1952 Topps is more famous
The ocean dumping story
Record sales
Sources

Nobody knows exactly how many Mickey Mantle rookie cards exist, because the number printed and the number that survived were never recorded. What can be counted is how many have been graded. PSA's total for his rookie card, the 1951 Bowman #253, was 2,530 in a count published in April 2026, and its total for the 1952 Topps #311 was 2,075 in a count published in November 2025.

Which Card Is the Mickey Mantle Rookie Card?

Two cards get called the Mickey Mantle rookie, and only one of them is.

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1951 Bowman #253: this is Mantle's rookie card. PSA calls it "the only recognized rookie card of The Mick." It came out a full year before the Topps card.
1952 Topps #311: this is Mantle's first Topps card and the more famous of the two. PSA's own page for the card says, "No, it is not Mantle's rookie card."

Mantle also has a 1952 Bowman card. Like the 1952 Topps, it is a second-year card. So the answer to "how many Mantle rookie cards exist" depends on which card you mean, and this post gives the numbers for both.

Card	What it is	PSA total graded	Record sale
1951 Bowman #253	Rookie card	2,530 (count published April 2026)	$3.192 million, PSA 9, Memory Lane, reported December 2022
1952 Topps #311	First Topps card	2,075 (count published November 2025)	$12.6 million, SGC 9.5, Heritage Auctions, August 2022

How Many Mickey Mantle Rookie Cards Exist?

There is no known print run for either card. Writing about the 1952 Topps set in November 2025, Sports Illustrated put it this way: the actual production numbers are "forever lost to the Hobby." Nobody tracked how many copies were thrown away, damaged or lost in the decades after, either.

That leaves the pop report, i.e. a grading company's running count of every copy it has graded, broken out by grade. Here is what PSA's counts show:

1951 Bowman #253: 2,530 graded by PSA, per a count published by All Vintage Cards in April 2026.
1952 Topps #311: 2,075 graded by PSA, per Sports Illustrated in November 2025. That made it the sixth most graded card in the 1952 Topps set.

Read those numbers for what they are. A pop report only counts cards sent to that one company. It does not count ungraded cards or cards in SGC or Beckett holders, so the real number of surviving copies is higher than any single pop report and is not known.

One thing the counts do show: PSA has graded more copies of the 1951 Bowman rookie than of the 1952 Topps.

PSA Population by Grade

These are the counts on PSA's CardFacts pages for each card as of October 6, 2026. PSA grades on a scale of 1 to 10, and a 10 is Gem Mint. The table shows whole-number grades only, so it adds up to less than the totals above.

PSA grade	1951 Bowman #253	1952 Topps #311
PSA 10 (Gem Mint)	1	3
PSA 9	9	6
PSA 8	53	35
PSA 7	115	77
PSA 6	195	123
PSA 5	297	186
PSA 4	402	216
PSA 3	321	208
PSA 2	316	242
PSA 1	293	389
Authentic only	180	223

High grades are where both cards get scarce. PSA lists 63 copies of the 1951 Bowman and 44 copies of the 1952 Topps at the whole grades of 8, 9 and 10. PSA notes that the 1951 Bowman is prone to print lines, wax stains on the back and poor centering. If you own a vintage card in any grade, keep it in a slab or a sleeve and holder. See how to store and protect your sports cards.

Why the 1952 Topps Is More Famous

The 1952 Topps Mantle is not the rookie card and it is not the scarcer card by PSA's count. PSA still describes it as "arguably, the most important baseball card in the entire industry" and as "the anchor of the most important postwar baseball card set ever made."

Three verified facts about the card:

It is a high number. The 1952 Topps set was released in six series. Mantle's card, #311, led off the sixth and final series.
It was double-printed. Topps printed twice as many copies of Mantle, Jackie Robinson and Bobby Thomson as of the other players in that final series.
It is not rare inside its own set. Sports Illustrated's November 2025 analysis of PSA's numbers found the final series was the scarcest of the six, but that the double-printed Mantle is among the least rare cards in the set.

The price comes from demand, not from a low count. We cover that in what sports cards are worth money.

Were 1952 Topps Cards Really Dumped in the Ocean?

The best-known story about the 1952 Topps high numbers comes from Sy Berger, the Topps executive who co-designed the set. In an interview with Sports Collectors Digest, Berger said that around 1959 or 1960 he had 300 to 500 unsold cases of 1952 Topps high-series cards loaded onto a garbage barge, three truckloads in all, and dumped in the Atlantic Ocean a few miles off Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey.

That is Berger's own account, told decades later. Sports Illustrated wrote in November 2025 that the story "has never stood up to serious scrutiny." Treat it as hobby lore, not as a documented reason for how many Mantles survive.

Record Sales

Both prices below are dated sale records, not estimates of what a copy would sell for today.

1952 Topps #311: a copy graded SGC 9.5 sold for $12.6 million at Heritage Auctions in August 2022. It was the highest price paid for a sports card at public auction until August 2025. The seller had bought it in 1991 for $50,000 from dealer Alan "Mr. Mint" Rosen, who found a group of high-grade 1952 Topps cards in the mid-1980s.
1951 Bowman #253: one of the nine PSA 9 copies sold for $3.192 million in Memory Lane's Fall Rarities auction, reported by Sports Collectors Digest in December 2022. The previous record for the card was $750,000.

To see what copies in lower grades have sold for, use the tools in how to find out the value of your sports cards. For more record sales, see our list of the most valuable baseball cards of all time, or shop our baseball cards and rookie cards.