A Destitute Basketball Legend's Rookie Card Eclipses Michael Jordan's

I must admit that I barely ever heard of George Mikan, dubbed “Mr. Basketball” for his pioneering play and dominance, until his card came up for auction. But now I’ll have a hard time forgetting him. His 1948 Bowman rookie card— the only specimen ever graded a PSA 10 gem mint— will probably reach $.5 million in an auction that closes on December 5th. “This particular  card sold for $218,500 in 2009 and we certainly anticipate that will double that price this time out,” says Terry Melia of SCP Auctions, in Laguna Niguel, California. “It’s basketball’s equivalent of the Honus Wagner T206 baseball card.” As of this posting, the card is up to $129,690 at www.scpauctions.com.

This card’s consignor is the same buyer, or perhaps investor, who set that record six years ago, buying it in a Memory Lane auction. “It lived up to its reputation as the holy grail of basketball cards,” wrote Rich Mueller in Sports Collectors Daily. “The card has no real defects of any kind, a rarity in an era when printing was far less sophisticated. It once resided in the collection of former major league pitcher Tom Candiotti.” Its very modest appearance, an almost perfect square measuring 2-1/16” by 2 ½” and featuring black and white tint photographs with a purple- blue background, belies its popularity. Numerous vintage card sites, from PSA to Cardboard Connections, rank it among their top 10 basketball cards of all time, even ahead of the Michael Jordan 1986 Fleer rookie.

At first glance its only rival for the top spot would seem to be the Jordan. “The sheer volume of available cards between the two is so far apart that it isn’t even funny,” Melia told me. “There are only 236 known PSA-graded Mikan rookie cards in existence, but this is the only one that received a grade of gem mint 10. There are 13,789 of the Jordans, with 225 of them being graded as gem mint 10.” The average price of those gem mint Jordans is about $17,000, according to vintagecardprices.com.

I figured the cardboard gods must be smiling on this post. A few days after Melia crunched the numbers for me, I discovered a 1950-51 card even rarer than the Bowman at my local baseball card show in White Plains, NY. A seller strolled the show’s aisles, hawking a Scott’s Potato Chips George Mikan, an incredibly scarce regional set issued by a potato chip company for the Minneapolis Lakers that could be redeemed for game tickets and an autographed team picture. As far as I can tell,  less than a dozen have ever surfaced. The asking price, $3000, in fair condition is about the going rate. If you’re wondering why this card wouldn’t be the king of the basketball card hobby, sometimes an issue can be too rare to create enough demand, as I’ve written about Cy Young and Duke Snider cards in much shorter supply than even the iconic Honus Wagner tobacco card.

The biography on the back of his card reveals that “George, who is married and has two sons, says the key to his success is sleep. He gets 12 hours a night.” (Somehow he found the time to earn a law degree.) The card also notes that the future Hall of Famer  was voted the “basketball player of the half-century” in a 1950 Associated Press poll.

Like Babe Ruth, Mikan was a one-man wrecking crew. He forced the NCAA and professional leagues to prohibit goaltending. He also led the NBA to double its lane to 12 feet to curb his influence under opponents’ baskets (the Mikan rule) and to introduce the shot clock to keep the ball away from him. As the first overpowering big man, the 6’10”, 245-pound bespectacled "Gentle Giant" perfected his Sky Hook from both hands long before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ever stepped foot on the court. His heroics earned him bushels of championships and scoring titles.  A founding father of the ABA, Mikan later devised the 3-point rule and red, white, and blue basketball.

His life’s final layup sounds pretty sad. “Mikan fought a long-standing legal battle against the NBA, fighting against the meager pensions for players who had retired before the league became lucrative,” SCP says in its elegant catalog description. “Mikan, who paved the way for the multi-million dollar contracts enjoyed by today’s NBA stars, tragically became a martyr of his own cause when he died in poverty after a long-standing battle against diabetes.”

There’s a rich irony that 10 years after his death, a single basketball card is selling for more than he ever earned, many times over. At the same time the length bidders will go to win this rare prize reinforces the immortality that Mikan deserves.