The "This Story Is Hard To Believe - Part I" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Sitting in my lounge chair reading my latest copy of the magazine known as "REMIND!"  Magazine features stories, items, etc. from the past.  Love going through it to get another chance to look back into history to see items from my childhood as well as more recent items.  The first story inside the cover, after the Table of Contents, was a story titled "They're Over The Top".  First page began with a paragraph that read....San Francisco private detective Sam Spade, played in 1941's The Malte Falcon by Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart, holds in his hands the black enamel statue of a bird.  He'd been led to believe that it is worth more than he could possibly imagine, but it's now been found to be a fake.  "What is it?" a local police detective asks of the weighty sculpture.  Spade ponders what might have been, and then, he utters one of the most famous lines in movie history. "The stuff that dreams are made of."  It's hard to imagine a better description for the sky-high-level collectibles that occasionally sneak into the market and fire our imagination with big-money prices.  Who knows what might be sitting in our own attics?  You can bet that if something like any of these most valuable items ever are up there collecting dust, you'll be wealthy once the dust settles.  Well, one of the first items that was introduced to the readers of the magazine was a Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle Baseball Card.  Remember the Mick?  The story about the card went like this..... That was essentially the scenario when renowned New Jersey baseball  card collector Alan "Mr. Mint" Rosen got a call in the 1980s from someone in Boston who claimed to have his father's mint condition collection of 1952 Topps cards sitting around.  At first skeptical, Rosen later bought them all...some 5,500 cards...for $125,000 after taking a look and realizing the guy was right:  The cards were in perfect condition.  Specifically, the Mickey Mantle card, an item treasured by hobbyists and fans, was judged an eye-popping 9.5 out of 10 from grading company SGC, and Rosen quickly sold it for $1,000, only to buy it back years later, selling it again for $40,000 to Anthony Giordano in 1991.  The card is a beaut: "The Mick" with a face full of resolve, foretelling a banner season ahead.  And "banner" well captures the path this baseball card took as it mirrored the climbing market.  In August 2022, Giordano and his sons sold the card they'd held on to for decades through Heritage Auctions.  The haul: an astonishing $12.6 million.  And...so ends the story!!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.