Look at how much I paid for a 1952 Topps Minnie Minoso rookie card

My blog is as much for me as it is for anyone else. Sometimes I write for readers rather than myself. That stops now. I don't know exactly what that means right now, other than I am going to start posting more of the prices that I paid for things. Sometimes I leave out the price because I might have paid too much and I don't want to be ridiculed for it. Other times I don't include the price because I got it for a steal and don't want to incite jealousy (that might be a little strong). But like I said, this blog is just as much for me as anyone else and I want to remember how much I paid for various cards.

As I prepared to write this post about the 1952 Minnie Minoso card I purchased at The Batter's Box card shop (I'm also going to document where I purchased the cards) I went back to my post from last year about the 1952 Bowman Minnie Minoso card I purchased at the same card shop and realized I didn't notate the price and I couldn't remember what I paid. I want to say it was probably somewhere between $8 -$12, but I'll never know now. I don't want that to happen again.

Yesterday I made an unexpected stop at The Batter's Box after my son's baseball tournament. Since I had been there last they had put out a couple hundred 1952 Topps cards for sale. There were several stacks between $6 - $10 per card. I didn't have time to look through them, but there were a few individual cards that caught my eye.

The Batter's Box has showcases for different dealers, but these cards were from the shop owners own case.

They typically tag their cards in this way, with the "List" (Beckett) price and then the sale price.

There are typically fairly priced, but I usually still do a quick eBay search to see if I can find a better deal elsewhere. I didn't do that this time. Even in this condition, I felt like $29.50 was a fair price and I wanted to snag it before someone else did.

Check out the back of the card and see just how fantastic 1952 Topps was! You get the players full name, when and where they were born, height, weight, with what hand they bat and throw, and their hair and eye color. How cool is that?

You also get a nice write up on the player. Here we learn that "Minnie" hit a home run in his first game with the Indians in 1949 and with the White Sox in 1951 (this may or may not be accurate, depending on if you believe wikipedia or not).  We learn that before he was playing in the majors with the Indians, he was playing in the Negro Leagues, which they referred to as "semi-pro ball" for the New York Cubans (he would spend parts of 3 seasons with the Cubans). We also learn that in 1951, his first full season and the year before this card was printed, he led the American League in stolen bases and triples while ranking second in batting average and runs scored.

Topps also included batting and fielding statistics from the past year and lifetime. This combined with the information above it, gives us some insight into 1949 and 1950. We are able to deduce that between 1949 and 1950 he only appeared in 9 games and had 16 at bats. These 9 games and 16 at bats would all come early in the 1949 season as he would spend he majority of 1949 and all of 1950 in the minors.

Such a great rookie card of a great player. I went into a little more detail about his career in the post about his 1952 Bowman rookie card which can be found here if you are interested.

I am glad to have been able to add his 1952 Topps rookie card to my collection and am happy with the price I paid. On the way home I told my nine year old son about the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card that sold last month for $5.2 million and we had fun discussing that and what else you could buy with that amount of money.

How about you? If you had $5.2 million and you had to spend it on you on the hobby, what would you purchase? I think I would start by picking up each Topps set from 1951 - 1980, obviously not in PSA 9 condition, but I still think I could add each set and have $5 million left.