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. While they numbered each card as if part of the Post Cereal set, it retains more value as a complete card.

LIFE magazine insert

TCDB's 1962 Post checklist notes a modest number of variations, including color differences around the stat lines. It otherwise shares identical checklists with Canadian and JELL-O versions. Uncut panels featured three players from each league, AL in blue and NL in red.

1962 Post uncut panel scan from eBay

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.