The Mickey Mantle baseball card recently sold for a record $12.6 million (£10.8m) at auction, making it the most valuable piece of sports memorabilia ever sold. The card dates back to his rookie season in Major League Baseball (MLB). The previous record was set when Diego Maradona’s shirt from his famous “Hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup sold for £7.1m at Sotheby’s in London in May. The card was originally purchased by Anthony Giordano, a New Jerseyan waste management entrepreneur, for $50,000 in 1991. Mantle, a New York Yankees legend, was a 20-time MLB All-Star and a three-time American League MVP award winner. At the time of his retirement, he held the Yankees’ all-time record for games played and had won seven championships while hitting 536 home runs. The sale of this card surpasses the previous record paid for a sports card, which was for a “T206” Honus Wagner card that sold for £6.2m earlier this month. Only 57 “T206” Wagner cards are in existence. Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions at Heritage Auctions, who conducted the sale, said that “an eight-figure auction result was the stuff of fantasy just a decade ago.”
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