The T206 Honus Wagner card has long been the most famous baseball card in existence. Known as the “Holy Grail” and the “Mona Lisa of baseball cards”, an example of this card was the first baseball card to be sold for over a million dollars.
Pictured right: The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card – The Holy Grail of Baseball Card Collecting and the nost valuable ever selling for $2.8 million in September 2007.
Only 50 to 60 of these cards are believed to exist. One theory for the card’s scarcity is that Wagner, a non-smoker, requested the production of this card be halted since it was being sold as a marketing vehicle for tobacco products. The problem with this theory is that Wagner appears on a tobacco piece produced by Recius in the late 1800s. Another theory postulates that Wagner was not offered any compensation for the use of his likeness. Consequently, he supposedly withdrew his permission to print any more copies. At the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, it is stated that while Wagner was a smoker, he did not want children to have to buy tobacco products to get his card. Therefore, he requested it to be pulled from production.
Of these handful of existing cards, the single most famous, a nm-mt PSA graded 8 (which also was the first card graded by PSA serially numbered 00000001) card which initially broke the US $1 million barrier, sold again on February 26, 2007 at auction for US $2.35 million to an anonymous buyer in Orange County, California. SCP Auctions, which had purchased minority ownership of the card, sold it again in September of 2007, this time to a private collector for $2.8 million, establishing yet another new record price for the card.
This particular card is in the best condition compared to the rest of the existing cards, having been encased in a protective Lucite sheeting for decades. Considered the ultimate pinnacle of baseball card collecting, the card has changed hands four times in the last 10 years, doubling in value on three of those occasions while having such ownership as hockey great Wayne Gretzky, Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall and later Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart had purchased the card in the mid-1990s to give away as part of a marketing campaign for a line of baseball cards. The winner of the give-away could not afford the taxes associated with it, and it ended up being sold at auction in the mid-1990s to a Chicago businessman and collector for $640,000 In mid-2000 it was sold again for $1,265,000 to a Las Vegas-based businessman who regularly had it placed on public display at baseball games and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library before selling the card for double his purchase price in February 2007. In 2007 NY Daily News writer Michael O’Keefe authored a book relating to the card. In the work he makes a case that the card had been deceptively trimmed by a well known mid west dealer. Currently there are 4 Wagner cards that have been p rofessionally graded between Very Good and Excellent. Sportscard Guaranty of NJ has graded two examples VG 40 and PSA of California has graded one example VG-EX 4 and one Example Excellent 5. Scott D Ireland of Vermont has the highest graded copy that has not been rumored to be altered.
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