He tried to avoid answering any questions regarding the matter but, in a 2001 interview, claimed to have received it from a relative, whose name he did not disclose. People who can play at that level understand that this is an opportunity thats not going to come around often, Dwyer says, and so when you have an opportunity to acquire something that is so rare, that is so special and so revered, and that is in such good condition as the example that were selling, youre going to see tremendous interest and prices that generally are record-setting.. . The back of the record-setting T206 Honus Wagner trading card, with the brand of cigarettes that the card and others like it were produced by American Tobacco Company to help market. Honus Wagner in 1905 In 1901, the American League began to sign National League players, creating a bidding war, which depleted the league of many talented players. Another raw T206 Wagner can be found at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exact reason for this has become something of legend, but it has been widely accepted to be one of two scenarios. Learn more - eBay Money Back Guarantee - opens in a new window or tab. One more after that will set a record. She consigned the card to Christie's, a New York-based auction house better known for selling famous artworks. On May 28, 2019, it was announced that a PSA-graded 2 (Good) card was sold by private transaction to an unnamed buyer for $1.2M. [36] McNall orchestrated the plan to buy the card. The T206 Honus Wagner card has been cataloged as having two different backs, Sweet Caporal and Piedmont. Within five years, Copeland decided it was time to sell his card collection; he chose to sell his entire 873-piece collection in a single sale, through Mastro. The two men, John Cobb and Ray Edwards, have tried to prove that their Piedmont-backed card is not a fake and, due to its excellent condition, should fetch over $1 million in an auction. Within minutes of the opening bid for the T206 Wagner card, the highest bidder had put down $228,000, twice the pre-auction estimate. [3] The card's odd texture and shape led to speculation that it was altered. Thank you, Dave. [26] The ATC had already produced a number of T206 Honus Wagner baseball cards; the exact number is unknown, but is speculated to be between 50 and 200. Meanwhile, HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel decided to cover the progress of Cobb and Edwards' struggles with the card. [5] These transactions have made the Wagner card the most valuable baseball card in history. This is an authentic reprint of the famous 1909 Tobacco Honus Wagner Baseball Card. MLB Power Rankings: Who's No. Additionally, many leading hobby experts regarded the card as a fake, including PSA president, Joe Orlando. Additionally, he stated that he was not comfortable with the print process exhibited on the card's front. Your inbox approves RB enters top 10 Men's basketball . ! However, a handful are known to have the Sweet Caporal 150 Series-Factory 30 advertisement. Connelly consented and took the card across the country to prospective buyers. Gibbs could not afford the taxes on the card, so she decided to consign the card to an auction later on. In February 2022, half of a torn T206 Honus Wagner card sold for $475,960. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2008-2023 The Cardboard Connection. The card was given this designation by PSA due to its oversized nature. Rare T-206 Wagner card sold for record $7.25M, Yankees put Judge on injured list with hip strain, Harper ready: 'Body has been very good to me', Braves OF Acuna (shoulder) day-to-day after HBP, Tatis fires up crowd in winning return to Petco Park, Giants place SS Crawford, OF Yastrzemski on IL, Astros' Urquidy lands on IL, Garcia exits start, What the longest game in MLB history says about baseball today, Mexico City's uphill climb toward landing an MLB franchise. It has even been the topic of a book by the same name. He has variously stated he purchased the card at an estate sale from "an old couple" for $1,800 in 1983 or 1984; he claimed not to know who Honus Wagner was at the time of purchase. One of theworlds rarest baseball cardswas sold for an extraordinary price last week. The 1909-1911 T206 White Border set is the most valuable collection in the history of trading cards. The T206 Honus Wagner card is not the oldest card ever. I am interested in selling my T206 Honus Wagner card. The most famous T206 Honus Wagner is the "Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner" card. [24] Wagner had a history of being a tough negotiator; he had announced his retirement from baseball in December 1907, but returned shortly before the start of the 1908 baseball season after receiving a $10,000 contract, double his salary from the 1907 season. One of the world's rarest baseball cards was sold for an extraordinary price last week. That looks like an even better bargain after a 2009 Mike Trout rookie card set a baseball card record at $3.9 million last August and a 1952 Mickey Mantle beat it with a $5.2 million sale price in January. 1911 M116 Sporting Life BLUE TINT Ira Thomas Philadelphia Athletics SGC NM 7. Mr. Mangasarian said the card seemed authentic and stated he would attend the auction for the card later on if the card could be taken out of the thick lucite holder for a closer examination. Wagner was offered a $20,000 contract by the Chicago White Sox, but turned it down and continued to play with the Pirates. The figure eclipsed the $6.606 million fetched for another T-206 Wagner almost a year ago to the day. However, this record was recently broken when a Mike Trout 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Superfractors series rookie card with a card count of 1 sold in August 2020 for a record setting $3.93 million, and pushed further back by a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card that sold for $5.2 million in November 2020,[6] making Wagner the third most valuable baseball card in the world. As Lifson commented, the Copeland deal revitalized the industry and "created an incentive to sell these great cards."[41]. The card was sold for $6.6 million at that time. Factoring in the 20% buyers premium that REA collects puts the official price above $4.8 million. "[22] However, Wagner chewed tobacco, and he had previously appeared in advertisements for many tobacco products, including a cigar baseball trading card in 1899 and a newspaper ad for Murad cigarettes during the 1909 World Series. Many of the remaining T206 Honus Wagner cards in existence have rated low on the PSA grading scale. Ray would not say where he acquired the card, to this day . According to PSA, current market values in various conditions are: Can you imagine owning a baseball card worth $7.5 million dollars? A 1909-11 Honus Wagner T-206, one of the rarest trading cards in the world, sold for $7.25 million to an anonymous buyer. Upload your video Looking for specific info? Stay up to date on all the latest sports card and memorabilia news, articles, and products by subscribing to our newsletter below: i found 6 honus wagner cards they are not a reproduction they are the real thing what would be a good place to sell them at they are in mint condition, I just found 3 rare cards in mint condition, what do I need to do to get graded and put up for auction. Reader wrote that "[i]t is not at all uncommon to find T206 examples that have been altered at some point during their near-century of existence. He also loves to write about the hobby and has written for Beckett, Topps, SABR and of course, this website. [36] Mastro, with the financial backing of friend Rob Lifson, sought to improve the offer and had Ray add 50 to 75 of his other T206 series cards, including the rare T206 Eddie Plank, into the deal. In February 2007, Seigel sold the card privately to an anonymous collector for $2.35 million. A rare, century-old Hogus Wagner baseball card previously owned by actor Charlie Sheen will be auctioned later this month with an estimated value of US$3 million, according to . Just a short six months later, the card was sold to another anonymous collector for $2.8 million. - Goldin Auctions", "Honus Wagner baseball card sells privately for $1.2 million", "ESPN: Rare Honus Wagner card sells for record $6.6M", "Half of rare Honus Wagner baseball card auctioned for nearly $500,000", "Holy Grail of baseball cards a Honus Wagner T-206 sells for record $7.25 million", The T206 Collection The Player & Their Stories, Baseball's Last Hero: 21 Clemente Stories, Bill Mazeroski's 1960 World Series home run, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=T206_Honus_Wagner&oldid=1151100663, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. The story of the most famous and valuable baseball card in the world continues to be told. A T206 Wagner given a two on the PSA's 110 grading scale sold for $75,000 in September 2000. A fake T206 Honus Wagner card in a fake 'basement grading' deceitful card holder. [70] Cobb, like Mastro back in the late 1980s, does not divulge the exact details of how he came to own the card. The T206 Honus Wagner is considered to be the Holy Grail of all trading cards. "[74] Afterwards, an appraiser named Bob Connelly valued the card at $850,000, based on the two previous paper analysis reports. Mastro eventually sold the card to Jim Copeland, a sporting goods magnate, for nearly four times the price he had originally paid. The winning online bid was $1.1 million, but with the 15% buyer's premium, the total came to $1.265 million. Collectibles marketplace Goldin announced on Thursday that a T-206 Honus Wagner has sold in a private sale for $7.25 million, a record amount for a sports card. An outraged Edwards dismissed the accusations as "bullshit," adding that they would not have been made "if we were white. The card was sent all across the United States, as part of Walmart's plan to rejuvenate the baseball card market. Otherwise, manually looking things up on eBay is also a good way to get a second opinion just pay particular attention to condition, which is very important for vintage stuff. Need help buying or selling cards or have a general question about the hobby? Beckett Graded Card Investor and Price Guide, Vol. Few collectibles possess the kind of mystique that this card carries. So this Wagner is a collectible that really does transcend the hobby.. History is just a couple of mouse clicks away. "[66], Initially sold at auction for $1.62M in 2008, the 'Jumbo Wagner' was featured by Goldin Auctions in their 2013 Winter Auction, which closed on April 5, 2013. This is when Gretzky approached the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) company to grade the card, resulting in the aforementioned PSA 8 NM-MT grading. we have a honus wagner cars 350-460 with a gretzky signature at the top is it worth anything.. Hi Ryan, It sold in March 2022 for $3,136,500, setting a record for a PSA 1 example.[89]. Hopefully after reading through this you have a further appreciation for the rarity and value of this notorious baseball card. [11] Some cards were awkwardly shaped or irregularly sized, which prompted a belief that many of the cards in the series had been altered at one point or another. In 2004, a PSA PR-FR-1 Wagner sold for $109,638. The T206 set itself is the most popular pre-War baseball card set in the hobby. To give you an idea, here are four of the most popular cards from the sets and their respective populations (number of them graded) by PSA currently: So, that should give you a good picture of how scarce Wagner's card is relative to others in the set. It doesnt have his name on the front but the ink is brown on the team name. [17], Starting from January 1909, the ATC sought authorization from baseball players for inclusion in the T206 series, which would feature 524 major league players, 76 of whom would later be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. A bidding competition between Mike Gidwitz, Mark Friedland and an unknown phone bidder ensued. Read more here. The first suggests that Wagner, a Hall of Fame shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, didnt want his likeness used to market tobacco. A SCG 3 grade of the famous T206 Honus Wagner card is set to hit the open market and could set a new record for sports cards. He wanted to teach kids good sportsmanship. PSAs website is psacard.com and their phone number is (800) 325-1121. Not all Honus Wagner baseball cards have been professionally graded by PSA or SGC. Several of the authentic cards have fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars in auctions regardless of their condition. It is graded PSA 1. It sold for about $316,000 in 2010 and the strip includes other players, including Cy Young, Mordecai Brown, Johnny Kling, and Frank Bowerman. You can learn more about this particular card here. Ray personally stated that Mastro might have been doing this to prevent others from trying to trace the card. Graded EX 5 (MC) on the PSA grading scale, the card has unusually ample borders due to a miscut. The final bid was $700,000, but with a 13% buyer's premium added, the realized price was $791,000. This page was last edited on 21 April 2023, at 22:41. [87] Historical price increases and the state of the sports collectible market contributed to projections that the auction could set a new overall price record for the sale of a T206 Honus Wagner. A T206 Wagner owned by renowned collector Frank Nagy sold for $456,000 in December 2005, through Mastro's auction company. The card long had a controversial past, as some speculate that it was once altered, most likely having been trimmed or cut from an undistributed sheet. It was later revealed that the anonymous collector was former major league pitcher Tom Candiotti. T206 Honus Wagner All Cigarette Tobacco Card Back Backs Reprint Novelty 16 Card Lot 5 out of 5 stars (5) $ 19.99. The American Tobacco Company was formed as a result of an 1889 merger of five major cigarette manufacturers: W. Duke & Sons & Company, Allen & Ginter, Goodwin & Company, F. S. Kinney Company and William S. Kimball & Company. Contact him at [emailprotected]. He had a photograph of the card taken before the transaction with Mastro and claimed that the card in the photo looked significantly different from the photo of Gretzky's card. There is no easy explanation, either, for the cool-down that much of the market has experienced over the last few months. The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card depicts the Pittsburgh Pirates' Honus Wagner, known as "The Flying Dutchman, a dead-ball era baseball player who is widely considered to be one of the best players of all time. Heritage Auctions handled the sale of the card, which exceeded pre-auction estimates. But, as the condition increases so does the price. The 1909 T206 Wagner is considered the "Holy Grail" of sports card and the SCG 3 is one of the five best-known examples in existence. The version of the Wagner that sold recently was graded a 2 out of 10 by Sportscard Guaranty Corp., or SGC; the 2021 record-breaker received a 3 from SGC. The card attracted lots of media attention over its questionable authenticity, including being a feature segment on the highly rated sports documentary program, HBO Real Sports. It is the highest graded example to hit the market in the past six . [65], A similar but unaltered card, the 'Jumbo Wagner', also has a NM-MT grade quality for the majority of the card, but the lower quality edges have not been trimmed, lowering it from NM-MT to an overall grade of PSA 5 one of only three (along with Mastro's trimmed card) rated PSA 5 or better sold at a 2013 auction for $2,105,770.50. Since then, the card has changed hands a few times but remains known as the "Gretzky Wagner" to this day. [12][13], The typical card in the T206 series had a width of .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}1+716 inches (3.65cm) and a height of 2+58 inches (6.67cm). $350.00. This would account for its almost impossible-to-believe Near Mint condition. There was also a private sale in June of a 1914 Babe Ruth card at a price that was said to beat $5.2 million but was not publicly disclosed. A handful of other T206 Honus Wagner baseball cards have surfaced in recent years, some real and some not. "[72], Card Collector Services graded the card and officially ruled that it was indeed a reprint. Only time will tell if other examples are waiting to be discovered. Courtesy SCP Auctions The damaged Wagner card sold at auction recently for $475,960. . That's what happened in August of last year, when one sold at an auction for $6.6 million, setting the record for the most expensive sports card of all time. [38] Inside the memorabilia community, there was speculation that the card had been cut from a printing sheet during the deal made with Mastro. Then who knows. (Wagner demanded that the ATC stop printing his image, either because he and the company couldnt agree on his compensation or because, in the more apocryphal version of the story, he didnt want to encourage children to buy cigarettes and pick up a bad habit.) Robert Edwards Auctions, a division of MastroNet, set up a registration system in which they approved prospective individuals before they actually made bids. Meanwhile, a number of card collectors who doubted the card contacted eBay and demanded that the card's listing on the website be removed. Friedland dropped out of the competition after the phone bidder countered with a $410,000 bid for the card. The current owner is Ken Kendrick, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who purchased the card privately in 2007 for $2.8 million. Auction houses including REA saw their sales spike in 2020 and are projecting them to double again in 2021. In a 2005 interview, McNall stated his "philosophy was, if you buy something that is absolutely the best in the world, you'd be okay because there is always another buyer for something at the top end. In his work Inside T206: A Collector Guide to the Classic Baseball Card Set, Scot A. what?! Elected to the Hall of Fame in its inaugural year, Wagner was truly one of the greats. Johannes Peter "Honus" "Hans" Wagner Born:February 24, 1874 - Chartiers, PA Died: December 6, 1955 - Carnegie, PA Batted:RH Threw:RH Position:SS Career BA:.328 Managerial Record:1-4 Teams: Louisville Colonels NL (February 24, 1874 - December 6, 1955) Pittsburgh Pirates NL (1900-1916; player-manager: 1917) The front of all T206 series cards, including the Wagner card, displayed a lithograph of the player[15] created by a multi-stage printing process in which a number of colors were printed on top of each other to create a lithograph with the appropriate design. Honus Wagner 1914 Cracker Jack E145-1 #68 The beauty of the 1914 Cracker Jack set has not been forgotten. In 2010, a PSA Authentic/Altered Wagner sold for $219,225. But it's believed there may be less than 60. I hve honus wagner card with his pic on front and wagner Pittsburgh at the bottom.on bck in red box honus wagner value 35000.00 1910 tobacco card then small storyis it valuable or worthless. Then, if a second dealer is an option, thats a good way to compare. The second, and more probable, is that Wagner felt entitled to compensation from the American Tobacco Company for the use of his name and likeness to market their product. Is it really? Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson, authors of The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card, asked why Wagner would compensate Gruber for $10, a substantial amount of money at the time (approximately equal to $275 in 2016), if he refused authorization for monetary reasons. Since baseball cards were primarily used as a sales promotion, ATC removed them from its tobacco packs, almost driving the cards into obsolescence. On April 20, 2012, an anonymous New Jersey resident purchased a VG-3 graded T206 Wagner card for more than $1.2 million. The backs of the cards featured the monochromatic colors of the 16 tobacco brands for which the cards were printed. In April, 2011, the identity of the buyer was revealed to be Ken Kendrick, managing general partner of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Mastro worked with Sotheby's for the next four years to facilitate sports memorabilia auctions and established himself as a leading card dealer in the industry. Production of the card was cut short due to a dispute between Wagner and American Tobacco. Linda (ID 58011) Once proven authentic, the card is potentially worth A LOT. 1) Read my past two columns on black light and direct comparison of cards. By the time Wagner, a legendary Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop, was selected as one of five members of the Baseball Hall of Fames inaugural class in 1936, the cards value was being recognized. In 2010, a rare Honus Wagner was found in a box left by the brother of Sister Virginia Muller, who left all her possessions to the Baltimore-based School Sisters of Notre Dame. Less than six months later, the card was sold to another anonymous collector for $2.8 million. [21], The reasons for Wagner's strong negative reaction to the ATC's request have been the subject of much speculation. [1] The card was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company (ATC) from 1909 to 1911 as part of its T206 series. Linda (ID 58009) Very nice. [7] That is, until August 2022 when another 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card sold for $12.6 million becoming the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia in history. Honus Wagner was a triple threat and an original Hall of Fame inductee. [55] Less than six months later, on September 6, 2007, SCP Auctions announced that the card had been sold once again to another anonymous collector for $2.8 million (equivalent to $3.7million in 2021). He didn't like the idea of how it might encourage kids to use tobacco. As Friedland made each bid, the phone bidder would counter with a bid $5,000 or $10,000 higher.