1962 Topps #18 Managers' Dream
On this card: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays
About this card
This is one of the eleven combo cards in the set, each pairing two or three players under a headline rather than giving one man his own card - Managers' Dream (#18, Mantle and Mays), AL & NL Homer Kings (#401, Maris and Cepeda) and Rival League Relief Aces (#423, Face and Wilhelm) among them.
The story on this card
Number 18 in the 1962 woodgrain set, Managers' Dream, is an event card that puts Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees next to Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants. The title is a joke only a manager could tell himself, since no skipper would ever pencil both of the game's great center fielders into one lineup, and the Giants' 1958 move west had put a continent between them. This is an early first-series card from the 1-109 run. That October the Yankees and Giants met in the World Series.
Mickey Mantle was the Yankees' switch-hitting center fielder across 18 seasons, a Triple Crown winner, three-time American League Most Valuable Player and seven-time World Series champion who hit 536 home runs on ruined legs. Willie Mays was the Say Hey Kid, the five-tool center fielder of the New York and San Francisco Giants: Rookie of the Year in 1951, Most Valuable Player in 1954 and 1965, twelve straight Gold Gloves, 660 home runs, Hall of Fame in 1979.
Sources: Wikipedia (Mickey Mantle) · Wikipedia (Willie Mays) · SABR BioProject (Mickey Mantle) · SABR BioProject (Willie Mays)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 5,447 | 1 | 11 | 213 | 661 | 1,018 | 1,069 | 2,455 | 19 |
| SGC | 2,492 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 101 | 259 | 562 | 1,467 | 87 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-09-24. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8), and PSA's qualified grades are counted separately from the straight-grade rows shown here. Slabs of the three cards printed #139 are joined by description, never by number alone. PSA registers the green tints as a separate set; a tint's population is listed under that state of the card it belongs to.
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Related cards
Team cards: #251 New York Yankees Team, #226 San Francisco Giants Team
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #18 card?
It is card #18 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. This is one of the eleven combo cards in the set, each pairing two or three players under a headline rather than giving one man his own card - Managers' Dream (#18, Mantle and Mays), AL & NL Homer Kings (#401, Maris and Cepeda) and Rival League Relief Aces (#423, Face and Wilhelm) among them.
What are the key cards in the 1962 Topps set?
The #200 Mickey Mantle anchors the set, with #1 Roger Maris opening it, #300 Willie Mays, #320 Hank Aaron, #5 Sandy Koufax and #10 Bob Clemente (printed under the shortened name Topps used for him) among the stars, #18 Managers' Dream pairing Mantle and Mays, and Mantle again on the #471 AL All-Star card. The #387 Lou Brock and #199 Gaylord Perry rookies head the first-year cards, and #530 Bob Gibson sits in the short-printed high series (#523-598), the hardest cards to find. Behind them come the #218 Joe Torre rookie, Mantle's #318 In Action card and the ten-card Babe Ruth Special.
How many cards are in the 1962 Topps Baseball set?
600 cards, tracked as 708 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps, but three different cards were printed #139 - two Hal Reniff poses, catalogued 139a and 139b, and the Babe Hits 60 Babe Ruth Special, 139c - so 598 numbers make 600 cards; 93 cards carry catalogued print variations, the series-2 green tints among them, that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Baseball Almanac, Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, The Topps Archives, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-03.