Ex-NFLer Evan Mathis sells Mickey Mantle card for near-record $2.88M

One of the rarest baseball cards in existence has been sold for a near-record price.

Former NFL guard Evan Mathis sold a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card in mint condition at auction Thursday night for $2.88 million - the second-highest price ever paid for a baseball card, according to ESPN's Darren Rovell.

The price tag on Mathis' Mantle falls just short of the record for any baseball card. In 2016, a collector paid $3.12 million for a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner, the rarest and most coveted of all cards.

On the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) scale used to grade the condition of cards, the Mathis Mantle card was rated 9 out of 10, meaning that despite one very minor flaw, it's still considered to be in mint condition. According to the Heritage Auctions sale page for Mathis' card, only six '52 Mantles (including this one) have ever been rated as a PSA nine, and just three of those rated as a "mint gem" 10.

Even for such a rare card, the selling price wowed those in the industry. Until Thursday, the most a '52 Mantle had ever sold for was $1.13 million.

"It's a remarkable price," said Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions at Heritage Auctions. "It was 10 years ago when we last had a Mantle 9 sell, but this (card) sold for 10 times that."

The 1952 Mantle is not a rookie card, as the Hall of Famer made his big-league debut with the New York Yankees the previous season. Part of the reason it became a rare gem is because it was part of that year's second wave of cards, which didn't sell when they were released; as Rovell details, an exasperated Topps executive once destroyed over 300 cases of the 1952 high-number cards by throwing them into the ocean.

Mathis, who earned over $21 million and won a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos during his 12-year NFL career, told ESPN's Outside the Lines that he sold his rare Mantle card partly to help fund the building of his family's dream house.