GUEST: In 1952, at age ten, I started collecting cards. My grandfather gave me a job of gathering snails in his garden.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm. (chuckles)

GUEST: And I was given five cents a, uh, jar. And so I had cash in my pocket. I walked down to this store and bought a pack of cards, opened it up. There was the one card we really had never seen before. There was Mickey.

APPRAISER: Okay.

GUEST: And it's never, never been out of my, um, possession.

APPRAISER: You have the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, card number 311. Mickey Mantle played between 1951 and 1968, all for the New York Yankees, Hall of Fame outfielder, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1974, 536 career home runs, and one of the most popular players in the history of baseball. The Mickey Mantle card here is the most sought-after card in all of card collecting, for the vintage cards. It's one of Mickey Mantle's rookie cards. The '51 Bowman came out one year earlier.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: The '52 Topps still is considered a rookie card. I would say 99.9% of the time, when cards come into ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, they're just like this. They're raw or ungraded. When you see this card come up for market or get valued, it's been graded. In the last five years, all 85 of them that have sold at auction were professionally graded. That doesn't surprise me. You're a purist about the card being in its original state.

GUEST: There’s no question about it.

APPRAISER: The market really is pushed by gr, the graded market on a card like this.

GUEST: Well, that's what some people think.

APPRAISER: When we talk about this card, and talk about the graded value versus the ungraded value, the card is going to carry more value when it's graded. When that card goes to the professional grader, first of all, they're going to verify the authenticity. They're going to be able to measure it to make sure it hasn't been trimmed or altered. They're also going to be able to check it under black lights...

GUEST: That’s right.

APPRAISER: …to make sure it hasn't been embellished or hand-colored. Then, after all that's done, they're going to assign a numerical grade on it.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And then they're going to encapsulate it.

GUEST: That’s right.

APPRAISER: What do you, what do you think about that?

GUEST: (scoffs) It's a burial-- they put him in a coffin.

APPRAISER: (chuckles) Okay. What I love about it is the coloring. It's so bright, and the centering is nice, too. When I pull out the high-power magnification, that's when I detect wear, just a little bit, on three of the corners, the worst being the lower left corner. This card here, in my opinion, is a VGX4.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And this card, in this condition, at auction, they sell for $40,000 to $50,000, ungraded.

GUEST: Well, the last one that I knew, August of 2022, that sold for $12.6 million?

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm?

GUEST: If that card was right here and my card was here, I'd pick my card up.

APPRAISER: Hm.

GUEST: So that's how I put value on things.

APPRAISER: Right

GUEST: Because I know it's authenticity.

APPRAISER: This card, professionally graded, assuming it gets that same grade...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: …of a very good- excellent condition, they typically sell at auction for $65,000 to $75,000.