Crystal clear c. 1952 photograph of an extremely young looking Mickey Mantle as he posed during spring training with his teammates. The image is one of the finest as far as clarity and contrast that we have ever seen with even the individual threads of Mantle's jersey being visible under magnification. While not dated, we feel this captures Mickey at the beginning of his career, but a jersey analysis and even using the unique leather straps in his glove could absolutely be used to pin this down to a specific year. The condition of the image is really nice from the front with the only flaws being two small pieces of tape that once held this in a scrapbook, while the back has some glue related paper loss as well. Printed on the appropriate Velox paper which dates this to at least the mid 1950's, this is a Type 1 image for sure that is a masterpiece of on-field photography from the beginning of Mantle's career!
Size: 3.5x5
Designation: Vintage 1
Condition: 4/5
Quality: 5/5
Overall Grade: 9/10