Cardsmiths deserves to win the fight over its $2 Mantle card

Mickey Mantle's rights holders and Cardsmiths are now suing each other in Manhattan federal court over the 2025 Cardsmiths Currency Series 5 "1952 Mickey Mantle" #118, a card whose base copy typically sells for about $2 on eBay. Mantle I.P. Holdings and Major League Alumni Marketing sued first on Sept. 24, asking in that complaint for at least $750,000, then filed an amended complaint Oct. 12. Cardsmiths sued back Oct. 28, saying letters to Best Buy, GameStop and other retailers cost it millions of dollars, though Sports Collectors Daily says its complaint gives no detailed calculation. Nothing has been proven in either case.

I think Cardsmiths is right, because a card about a card is commentary. It doesn't devalue the original, in my opinion, it does the opposite. It gives exposure to the real grail to more collectors who are asking themselves "why is this Mantle card in this Cardsmiths set"? Its filing, as Sportico reports it, says #118 shows the 1952 Topps as a graded collectible in overlapping slabs, with a Cardsmiths label, a cert number and a QR code, in red, black and gold. Look at the company it keeps, too. Currency is a set about money with a Series 5 checklist that runs through Dogecoin, Dead Cat Bounce and Zimbabwe's 100 trillion note. To me, a slabbed Mantle in that company reads as a joke about 1952 cardboard turning into a financial asset.

The Mantle complaint names Topps as an exclusive licensee. Topps has sold reprints and remakes of the 1952 card for decades. Raw base copies of the three in the chart typically sell under $20. Licensing sits at the center of this, because the Mantle side says Cardsmiths never had authorization. Sports Collectors Daily reported that Fanatics, Topps' parent, demanded by letter in June that Cardsmiths recall Series 5 until the Mantle cards were removed. Fanatics isn't a plaintiff. The same outlet found Fanatics Collect listing a box and a single on consignment Sept. 27.

The Mantle side has real points. Its original complaint quotes a Reddit user asking, "Is this an OG or a reprint?" The box is the harder problem. That complaint says Mantle's image was the only recognizable one on it and served as the specimen in Cardsmiths' trademark application, while Jack Daniel's took away a free-speech shortcut in 2023 for marks used as a seller's own brand. Sports Collectors Daily reported in September that his image no longer appears on the front of the box on Cardsmiths' site, though the complaint says boxes with the original image are still on shelves. Cardsmiths answers that the image is one element among other artwork. The Tenth Circuit's Cardtoons ruling protected cards from a state publicity law as "an important form of entertainment and social commentary," but those were parodies, it wasn't a trademark holding and that court doesn't bind this one.

But the box argument doesn't reach the card, because a seller's brand is a different thing from a card commenting on the 1952 Topps. Cardsmiths alleges, according to Sports Collectors Daily, that the Mantle side went to retailers before any judge ruled. If a letter to Best Buy can clear an unlicensed card off a shelf that way, I'd expect fewer of them. The parties have an initial conference Nov. 18, with the Mantle side's opposition to Cardsmiths' motion to dismiss due Nov. 23. I'd spend the $2 on a base #118, because that's cheap for the main exhibit in a case the hobby should want Cardsmiths to win.