WagnerBeckett Media LP:

The finest known example of the famed 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner was once again sold this week, this time for a record-setting $2.8M in a private transaction conducted by SCP Auctions. The card, graded NM-MT 8 by PSA, was at one time owned by Wayne Gretzky in addition to being the grand prize for a national promotion conducted by Wal-Mart.

Prior to this most recent transaction, SCP Auctions had sold the card this past February for $2.35M to another private party and had themselves taken a minority ownership position in the card.

“The T206 Honus Wagner card is an icon, not only in the field of baseball card collecting, but in the larger field of Americana,” said David Kohler, president and CEO of SCP Auctions. “We are privileged to have been involved in the sale of this card, not once but twice.”

1 COMMENT

  1. You remember those cards you used to get in PG Tips? That you collected in a little book, then threw in the bin? With cars? And the 1950s?

    Like that, only ub-SEEENly expensive.

    //Oo/\

  2. this card is so valuable b/c it’s rarity. and it was discontinued b/c these cards were ‘tobacco’ cards and reportedly Honus did not want kids to be influenced into trying tobacco, so he told them to stop making his card.

  3. Michael is correct.

    The other great story about Honus Wagner is that, although he was by all accounts a decent stand-up guy, and it took a lot to rile him, he once punched Ty Cobb right in the face during a game. Cobb—who was an astonishingly talented player, but a thoroughly hateful human being—insulted Wagner with ethnic slurs, then came sliding into second with his spikes up, hoping to draw blood. Honus made the catch, and tagged Cobb—POW!—right in the mush.

    Stories like that make me tingle all over.

  4. Simon Fraser Says:
    I am not American
    I do not understand
    WTF?!?

    Allow me, an American, to explain; Honus Wagner is very powerful Pokemon that shoots fireballs out of his mouth and is considered considered to be the greatest shortstop ever. A shortstop is a type of Pokemon.

  5. the great thing about this card is that it’s not the “rarest” of old baseball cards.

    It’s just the most famous card, due in part to it being once owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

  6. What’s rarer? When I was a kid I remember my friends talking about it being the rarest, even before Gretsky owned it.

  7. I’ve heard vintage card experts (of which I am not) talk about how “overrated” the Wagner card is and how there are others (much less famous) “should” be the super big card. I wish I could remember where I heard or read it. Maybe it was in a beckett baseball issue the last time the Wagner was sold before this time.

  8. “We are privileged to have been involved in the sale of this card, not once but twice.”

    They have, of course, waived their comission on these sales.