Honey of a Honus
Private Sale
Honus Wagner near-mint T206 tobacco card
Reported price: $2.35 million
To most people, it’s just a little piece of cardboard, only 1-1/8 x 2-5/8 inches, encased in an ugly plastic slab. A little piece of 98-year-old cardboard with a colorful picture of an old-timey baseball player.
But to serious baseball card collectors, it’s an icon worthy of solemn veneration: the hobby’s Holy Grail.
So just how much veneration does the only known near-mint T206 Honus Wagner card inspire? Would you believe $2.35 million worth?
Let us bow.
Okay, now get up. And let’s get real here. What’s the value equation for this scrap of old cardboard? How does this kind of price happen?
First, there’s his heavyweight status in American sports history. Big-handed, bow-legged, with a rocket of a throwing arm, Honus Wagner was one of the first five players ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Not only was the Pittsburgh Pirates’ shortstop an 8-time NL batting champ with a lifetime batting average of .329, but the “Flying Dutchman” retired holding records in hits, singles, doubles, triples, runs, RBIs and steals. The guy was a straight-up stud.
But hey, legends like Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson and Babe Ruth were in that inaugural Hall of Fame class, and their cards aren’t selling for near that kind of smack.
Ok, so let’s talk rarity. The Wagner T206 is neither the oldest nor the rarest baseball card out there. Still, it’s scarce—with some 50-100 known in circulation. Wagner yanked his image from the T206 tobacco card run because—mythology goes—he didn’t want to be a poster boy for the evil weed. The more likely reality? The Flying Dutchman (a chaw fan himself, whose uniform was routinely stained with “mud, blood and tobacco juice”) felt that the tobacco company was stiffing him of a proper royalty. Indeed, there are extant photos of him mouthing a stogie and chomping his chaw, in full view of kids on the ball field. He even had later tobacco endorsements (see below).
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Let’s not forget the condition factor. This card is the only known Wagner T206 rated by the PSA (Professional Sports Authenticators) as an 8 (out of 10) near-mint. To put that in perspective, PSA claims to have authenticated, graded and slabbed 28 of the known T206 Wagners. And according to its website, “Of those, only three have earned grades of 4 (VG-EX) or better, three examples earned 3 (VG) status, with the remainder garnering grades of either a 1 or 2 due to substantial wear or significant physical imperfections.” In other words, this example smokes the known comparables.
That said, even a T206 in crappy condition can pay for your kid’s college education. A PSA 2 Wagner sold for $294,000 in a Memory Lane auction late last year. Said Brian Siegel, the owner who scored this $2.35 million sale, “you could stick (one) in the middle of the street and let cars drive over it through the day, take it in your hand and crumple it up, and it still would be a $100,000 card.”
Part of that has to do with the overall quality of the T206 issue. Plenty of companies printed plenty of baseball cards, but what makes the 1909-1911 T206 set shine? Its strong graphic appeal and legendary parade of players. The lithographic portraits are frontal, iconic and boldly hued, set off even further by their solid, brightly colored backgrounds and vibrant white borders. Not to mention, the set features some of the most beastly players of the deadball era, from Cy Young to Ty Cobb to Walter Johnson. It’s easily one of the three most important card sets in baseball card history, along with the 1933 Goudey and the 1952 Topps.
Finally, this card has an x-factor that continues to amp up its value, and that’s its provenance, or ownership history. Most press reports on the card’s sale will trumpet the fact that it was once owned by hockey great Wayne Gretsky and that it was subsequently sold in a promotional auction for Wal-Mart. (The winner ended up flipping it because she couldn’t afford the taxes….) All this burnishes the already considerable mystique of the card. Indeed, look at the trajectory of its sale price:
1991 $451,000
1995 $500,000
1996 $640,500
2000 $1.2 million
2007 $2.35 million
Do all those factors—historical importance, condition, rarity, set quality, provenance and mystique—justify those steep increases in value? The elite baseball collecting world thinks so. As long as there are deep-pocketed memorabilia collectors who want to feel connected to one of the greatest legends of the game and want to associate their name with the legend of this card, then the value on this one-of-a-kind piece is, essentially, anything they want to pay. As far as I can see, it’s pretty much bullet-proof.
