Costco has a baseball card it wants to show you. Buried deep in the website is a rare 1951 Mickey Mantle rookie card by Bowman.

Now, it’s not mint condition, but it’s got The Mick’s signature and the signature rating couldn’t be better.

Grading company PSA rates the card as very good or excellent. The company gives the signature a “10.”

Costco wants $250,000 for it. And there’s only one of them.

A 1951 Bowman Once Sold for $3.2M

Requests to Costco about where the card came from or why it’s being listed on the website instead of an auction house weren’t immediately returned. In terms of collectability, though, this is a gem.

The 1951 Bowman is the Yankee great’s true rookie card and the second-most desired, according to Sports Collectors Digest. Cards graded as “very good” sell for an average of $17,364, according to PSA. The most recent sale went for $31,200.

Related Story:

Only one “Mint 10” exists and has never been sold. Sports Collectors Digest reports Arizona Diamondbacks principal owner Ken Kendrick owns that card.

The next grading down, a “Mint 9” sold for $3.2 million in January 2022.

“Very good to excellent” (VG-EX4) means the card’s corners may be rounded and surface wear is noticeable. Borders may have yellowed but centering must be decent.

What sets the Costco card apart is the signature rating. The “10” rating means that when Mantle signed it, the pen didn’t skip and he took his time to do it.

The Topps card that came out for Mantle’s 1952 year is the true designated hitter for collectors with a few extra million dollars to spend. The image comes from his first spring training with the Yankees. The sale of a mint one of those cards still holds the industry record, auctioning for $12.6 million in 2022.

Sports Collectors Digest says collector Marshall Fogel declined a $30 million offer for his top-rated card.