THE EVERYMAN

From the Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas to the Missouri side of Kansas City, Bobby is here to play ball. He was born to play ball. To hit dingers and to swipe bags. Inject some salt-of-the-earth energy into your PC and toss one back to the sandlot with this Throwback Thursday design from 2001 Bowman ... then toss in the variation for good measure. He’ll earn his keep.

The Outlaw

Oneil Cruz

There’s a bit of Batman to Cruz. His lure exists outside conventional back-of-the-card stats and leans on a knack for ripping balls out of PNC Park. He’s not the OBP savant that Pittsburgh needs … he’s the slugger they want. Loot your marketplace listings for a Pirateappropriate 2022 Topps Chrome Gilded card and turn your showcase into a treasure chest.

The Leader

Adley Rutschman

Why? Because America loves a good backstop boy-wonder. Rutschman is a player of goldenlocked pedigree; a young heartthrob playing for the underdog Orioles. Pin him up with a color-match made in hobby heaven.

The Magician

Strider, you 2022 fantasy baseball waiver wire wizard. One can only speculate where he draws his power from, but until proven otherwise, it’s the ‘stache. Conjure the mystique with a card that doubles down on the source.

The Hero

Peña played the part in the postseason and has the hardware — and this card — to prove it. Throw it back to the biggest stage in the game with this World Series MVP celebration.

The Creator

Kick up the shutter speed for Carroll; the kid can flatout run. For his own team, he plates scoring situations. For opposing infields, pure chaos. When he lays down a bunt — that bunt — all hell breaks loose.

The Doppelganger

J-Rod’s Rookie of the Year counterpart in the National League had a storybook season in his own right. Can he mirror his inaugural campaign and continue to square off for ratings with Seattle’s new star? Keep it dialed.

Since its inception, the PSA grading room has seen it all. Amongst others: 319,043 cards from the 1975 Topps Baseball set and another 365,393 cards from the 1986 Fleer Basketball release — with 24,615 Michael Jordan #57 rookies in the mix. In the TCG realm, PSA grades, on average, as many as 8,500 Pokémon cards every day. But when four obscure (albeit ultra rare) baseball cards were submitted together at the start of the new year, the grading room stopped, just for a moment, to take stock. Whispers filled the air. Top graders huddled. Something special had arrived.

During the past five years, certain “test” trading cards stemming from an experimental set designed by Topps in the early ‘60s have started to surface. The buzz they are creating is unparalleled.

In 2018, Robert Edward Auctions (REA) sold an unnumbered card featuring New York Yankees icon Mickey Mantle from the mysterious, never publicly released “Topps Dice Game” set. Graded PSA 1, the card sold for an astounding $144,000 following 43 bids online. Despite its harsh assessment from the PSA grading team, the card reached six figures because of its incredible scarcity. The REA sale, it turned out, was just the beginning of bigger auction prices to come.

“These cards are extremely limited,” said Clay Hill, former longtime trading card expert at SCP Auctions in Laguna Niguel, California. “There are just a few known examples.”

Literally, of each card.

“These are the rarest of the rare,” he added.

According to Hill, industry insiders were definitely aware of the cards’ existence, but the trouble was in finding them. He recalled the cards being mentioned a couple of times in articles that appeared in The Trader Speaks, a monthly hobby publication that ran from 1968 to 1983.

As it turned out, the card that REA sold featuring The Mick (PSA cert #70248789) was one of 18 different player cards created for the set. Topps selected nine All-Stars (one at each position) from both the American and National leagues, but its basic black-and-white presentation on 3-½” by 2-½” white cardstock never made it into the Brooklyn-based company’s regular production cycle. For reasons still unclear, the Topps Dice Game idea translated to just three sample sets (54 cards total) ever being printed, all of which remained at Topps headquarters for decades. None of the cards even sport a Topps logo.

According to Hill, the three test sets produced by Topps were each handled differently by the company. He believes there was one collection of 18 single cards kept separately, while another set was used for recordkeeping purposes with each card stapled to its own piece of paper in the office files. The third set was saved as an uncut sheet. The majority of cards that have been graded PSA 1 show two small pin holes in their top left corners, thus lending credence to Hill’s account.

To put the set’s extraordinary rarity into perspective, let’s measure it against the prized 1952 Topps Baseball set. To date, PSA has graded 281,306 cards from the manufacturer’s first major baseball release including 1,879 copies of Mickey Mantle’s coveted #311, his most famous card of all time. By comparison, PSA has only graded 19 cards from the ‘61 Topps Dice Game. Well, until January, when the PSA Pop Report rose by 21%, bringing the PSA-graded total to 23. The fact that four previously undiscovered cards from 62 years ago were found is remarkable, but the circuitous route longtime collector Fred McKie took to secure the cards is one for the record books.

“I didn't discover them,” said McKie. “A friend of mine, who’s a huge Willie Mays collector, saw them on eBay and told me about them.”

As the story goes, a man from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, traveled to New York to clean out his mother’s house in Brooklyn. During the purge, he unearthed the four cards — Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Stan Musial and Bobby Richardson — that were housed inside a pencil case in a drawer. He had no idea

NL

Del Crandall, Catcher

Jim Davenport, Third Base

The Checklist

Dick Groat, Shortstop

Bill Mazeroski, Second Base

Bill White, First Base

Frank Robinson, Left Field

Willie Mays, Center Field

Stan Musial, Right Field

Don Drysdale, Pitcher

AL

Earl Battey, Catcher

Brooks Robinson, Third Base

Tony Kubek, Shortstop

Bobby Richardson, Second Base

Norm Siebern, First Base

Leon Wagner, Left Field

Mickey Mantle, Center Field

Al Kaline, Right Field

Camilo Pascual, Pitcher what he had. He listed the cards on eBay for $4.99 apiece. Within minutes he was getting bombarded with inquiries. Soon thereafter he realized he had something worth something. One of those inquiries came from McKie.

“I was kind of the point man [for my friend] and contacted the guy through eBay,” he said. “The initial appeal came because of the Mays card. My friend had one years earlier and that’s the one he wanted.”

Conversations between McKie and the seller (who shall remain nameless) started in September and lasted for months. “He was getting hit with all kinds of offers and I’m actually not sure why he stayed with me. But when we met on the turnpike and he showed me the cards, I knew we were getting close. My main concern was whether the cards were real. I had to see them in person.”

A leap of faith? A roll of the dice? Any way you shake it, their eventual meeting was on the horizon. After several more weeks, the two men finally met at a Starbucks off Exit 4 of the New Jersey Turnpike. The gettogether, however, was just for show and tell.

“He had them in regular card savers, but they were real,” said McKie.”I held them and then he took them back. I told him I wanted all four, but wouldn't pay for them until they were graded.”

They agreed to have an escrow account set up, which would be funded once the cards were graded by PSA. When you’re talking about six figures, the deal required due diligence on both sides.

As part of the agreement, McKie would fly from Philadelphia to Myrtle Beach to retrieve the cards and submit them to PSA. Following their examination in Santa Ana, California, they came back with the following grades: Mantle, PSA 2.5; Mays, PSA 2; Musial, PSA 2.5; and Richardson, PSA 3.5. The unnamed seller got his money and McKie and his buddy got the cards.

Asked when the cards might be going up for auction, McKie responded: “They’ve already been sold. It was a private transaction. Done.

“My friend was just looking for the Willie Mays card but we wound up selling all of them because he agreed the deal we were offered [afterwards] was just too good to pass up.”

The final sale price was not disclosed. A roll of the dice indeed.