Beautiful, well-centered, original owner example, fresh to the hobby. Though very mild corner wear and a slight bit of print snow are evident, those are really the only two flaws with this card, a truly exceptional example. Consigned directly from its original owner and submitted by us to PSA, this card has remained virtually untouched for years.
An interesting addition to this description: a few days before the auction close, a customer contacted us and said "Look at the '59 Mantle in your auction, there's something wrong with the scan - his face is all red." We pulled both '59 Mantle cards from our inventory shelves so that we could re-shoot them, and discovered that the issue was not with the scan - it's on the cards! The area at the bottom of Mantle's face and neck has a curious red shadow, which extends into the dark area behind him. Both examples in this auction came from the same consignor, the original owner who pulled them from packs when he was a boy. This got us curious - are there other examples of this card with this issue? And after searching online, we found a few other examples of this "bloody face" variation - including a couple in our own past auctions!
So we reached out to a few of our "go to" hobby scholars with significant knowledge of error cards, and of vintage Topps. All were aware of this and consider it a legitimate variation. How much is it worth? We don't know! All we know is that in more esoteric collecting circles, this is a tough variation of one of the set's key cards, and in more traditional circles, it's a nice PSA 6!