In very few areas of the hobby can one call an issue's key cards "underrated," but in the case of the 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle, the description is appropriate.  Despite its status as the "true" rookie card of postwar baseball's most revered and popular player, the 1951 Bowman Mantle has long been overshadowed by the legend of his 1952 Topps issue (which many even refer to as his rookie card).  Still, nothing can change the fact that the 1951 Bowman #253 Mantle is his rookie card, and it is a beautiful, desirable card depicting the young Yankee outfielder from the waist up in his batting stance, blue sky and puffy summer clouds in the distance.  Despite being underrated, the card is in the midst of an explosive period of popularity growth, having reached as high as $84,000 in EX condition, with a mint example eclipsing $3 million several years ago.

What takes a 1951 Bowman Mantle out of the "underrated" category into the "extremely desirable" one is an autograph.  Once frowned upon by condition-sensitive collectors, the hobby has now accepted and embraced the rarity and beauty of signed vintage cards, even assigning a premium to more attractive and bold signatures.  And while a 1951 Bowman Mantle is hardly scarce - PSA alone has graded 2,727 examples - the card becomes orders of magnitude more rare with the presence of an autograph.  Indeed, has authenticated just 32 signed examples of Mantle's rookie card - equivalent to just 1% of the total graded output of the card without a signature.

In the case of this example, the desirability of the signed card is increased by a beautiful, carefully-applied autograph.  Placed nearly perfectly centered in the bottom half of the card, the signature is in dark blue fiber-tip or Sharpie, with even ink application and no smudging or blemishes.  The signature is bold and clear enough to have earned a grade of MINT 9 by PSA/DNA.  The card itself is centered to the northeast of the canvas, but less distracting than many examples of the same card (note the poor centering of the example sold by Love of the Game in 2017 for a then record-breaking price of $37,000, a price that seems downright cute today). Some honest corner wear detracts from the technical grade of the card itself, hardly detracting from its visual appeal.  

Certainly one of the finer signed 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle cards in existence, a clean, midgrade card with a beautiful, even signature, one of the most desirable of all signed postwar cards.