1962 Post Cereal Baseball #5, Mickey Mantle

I wrote up the 1962 Post Cereal Canadian set in 2008, whose #5 pictures Mickey Mantle, a.k.a. The Patron Saint of Topps Cards. That year, three different sets used a nearly identical format of upper-right photo, upper-left bio, and bottom edge stat grid. Today's post shows another from the same year, 1962 Post Cereal (American).

Card front (blank back)

Aside from being more internationally authoritarian, the American Post Cereal set differs in several notable ways from its Canadian counterpart.

• Post logo placed in politically key "Midwestern region"
• Complete absence of non-English languages
• Photo cropped closer to emphasize Mantle's dominance of the sport
• Red, white, and blue colors more balanced to improve patriotic presentation

...and thus ends the geopolitical humor.

As mentioned in the previous #5 post, there's one more 1962 card related to these three. That year, LIFE magazine co-opted 1961's famous "Mantle v. Maris" home run chase with a new subscription promo. It's numbered as part of the Post Cereal set, though obviously retains more value as a complete card.

LIFE magazine insert

See CenturyOldCards.com's "misc cards" page for a full-sized scan of this piece of Americana. KeyManCollectibles.com hosts a nice 1962 Post Cereal set profile, which shares the same checklist with the Canadian and JELL-O versions.

UPDATE: Found this six-card panel on eBay, featuring three players from each league, AL in blue and NL in red.

Value: Based on eBay completed auctions, NM Post cards go for $35-65 and VG cards about half that. That $65 listing used Buy-It-Now and looks like an outlier; the next highest NM auction (with bidding) went for $54.

Fakes / reprints: I've seen both fakes and reprints in the market, since Mantle's such a popular guy. 1960s cereal box cards used similar cardboard stock and thickness to those on store shelves today, so use that as a baseline. Also check for clear, sharp-edged type, as scanned and reprinting can blur the text.