"It's a beautiful card." A fellow collector says, looking over my shoulder. "You're not gonna regret buying it." In a large auditorium hosting a trading card show featuring hundreds of vendors, we're staring down at one of thousands of expensive pieces of cardboard. This one is a 1955 Bowman Mickey Mantle baseball card, graded a 2 by SGC. He's not wrong, of course. It is a beautiful card. Like its fellow Bowman cards of the early 1950's, it features magnificent, detailed artwork of one of the game's greatest players. The '55 set is of particular interest in that the cards have a wood-grain border, and a picture screen surrounding the artwork. A set of knobs complete what is intended to look like a color television set. As a historian I can't help but appreciate how well
Finding my Father in an Old Piece of Cardboard
Finding my Father in an Old Piece of…
Finding my Father in an Old Piece of Cardboard
"It's a beautiful card." A fellow collector says, looking over my shoulder. "You're not gonna regret buying it." In a large auditorium hosting a trading card show featuring hundreds of vendors, we're staring down at one of thousands of expensive pieces of cardboard. This one is a 1955 Bowman Mickey Mantle baseball card, graded a 2 by SGC. He's not wrong, of course. It is a beautiful card. Like its fellow Bowman cards of the early 1950's, it features magnificent, detailed artwork of one of the game's greatest players. The '55 set is of particular interest in that the cards have a wood-grain border, and a picture screen surrounding the artwork. A set of knobs complete what is intended to look like a color television set. As a historian I can't help but appreciate how well