APPRAISER: You brought three friends today in baseball cards. I see Gil Hodges, Jim Rhodes, and Mickey Mantle. Tell us how you got 'em
GUEST: Well, I was about nine years old, and my mother was kind enough to purchase Stahl-Meyer hot dogs, and on the back of those hot dogs were these pictures. As I understand, looking at the history of this, they were produced from 1953...
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: ...to '55.
APPRAISER: Hmm.
GUEST: Just regular hot dog, you know. And you had to be careful when you opened them up so you didn't cut the card. Every team was represented on the back of those Stahl-Meyer cards-- every New York team-- the Yankees, and the Giants, and the Dodgers.
APPRAISER: So Stahl-Meyer was the major supplier of hot dogs to ballparks in the 1950s. And it's interesting that you mention the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Yankees. Because in the '50s, New York was the epicenter of Major League Baseball. In 1953 to '55, they inserted baseball player cards from the New York teams. You have Gil Hodges here, who's the first baseman of the, the Brooklyn Dodgers. You have Jim Rhodes, who was better known as...
GUEST: "Dusty."
APPRAISER: There you go! Who played for the Dodgers. And then, of course...
GUEST: Mickey Mantle.
APPRAISER: The great Mickey Mantle. They started in '53. They went to '55. And every year, they would have a different promotion on the back of them. One year, you could sign up for a raffle and get tickets to a game. And this is how you would tell the different years. This year is actually 1955. And you can tell because the backs, you could either send 50 cents and two wrappers for a Yankees cap, or you could get a Yankees pennant. When we think about baseball cards, who do you think of post, post- World War II for baseball cards?
GUEST: Topps was the top one at the time.
APPRAISER: That's right. But there were a lot of these what they call regional brands that would put out small groups of cards in the packages of their wares, so that they could market to baseball fans, and that's what makes these extremely rare. So when we're valuing cards, what we're doing is, we're looking at the particular player, the issue, and then we look at the condition. Do you think they came like this, in the wrapper, possibly?
GUEST: Oh, yes, I'm sure.
APPRAISER: In that condition.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And that's what also makes them very rare. Cards are graded on a scale of one to ten-- ten being the highest. So what takes off points and gradings, if you've got excessive wear, if the margins are cut unevenly. Another thing about these cards is that you do not find them in high grades, and I think that's because of whatever damage they suffered in the wrappers coming out. So Gil Hodges and Dusty Rhodes, fine players. I think Gil Hodges should be in the Hall of Fame, but neither one of them is. So at auction, I would put an estimate on each one of them of $200 to $400, okay? Now, the Mantle is an entirely different story because of who he is. He is the most collected postwar baseball card. So when you add that to Stahl-Meyer,
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: and the fact that there are only 20 of these known, possibly, of the Mantle that exist, even in not-great condition because you've got these creases in here, and you've got this soiling here-- which is probably from the printing-- and you've got a little crease there. Now, I've seen examples of these cards that have graded as low as a one, and they're actually much worse. I think this would grade out to probably a two. And I think you're looking at an auction estimate of $5,000 to $7,000 on the Mantle.
GUEST: Wow. (chuckling) Something else. Wow, that's great.
APPRAISER: Don't you wish you had three Mickey Mantles?
GUEST: I wish I had three Mickey Mantles. (chuckling) Not, not to belittle the other two fellas.
