Honus Wagner Card Sells For $6.6 Million, The Third Record Baseball Card Sale In A Year

A T206 Honus Wagner card offered for $6.6 million in a web-based public sale that concluded early Monday morning, smashing the report value for a baseball card.

The cardboard, which was issued by the American Tobacco Co. between 1909 and 1911 as half of what’s now often known as the T206 collection of baseball playing cards, has an extended historical past as baseball’s Most worthy card, sustaining that distinction for a lot of the historical past of the pastime. One such card set a mark at $3.12 million in 2016, however the Wagners had been overtaken final August by a one-of-a-kind card that includes modern-day celebrity Mike Trout at $3.93 million after which in January by a Mickey Mantle rookie card at $5.2 million.

Now, the report once more belongs to Wagner, a legendary Pittsburgh Pirates ​​shortstop who performed his final main league recreation in 1917 and was one of many 5 members of the Baseball Corridor of Fame’s inaugural class in 1936.

The public sale, run by Robert Edward Auctions, opened on July 23 with a reserve value of $1 million, however the bidding shortly left that determine within the mud. The escalation stalled for a bit after a $4 million bid got here in on July 28 however picked again up once more because the deadline approached, with the twenty sixth and closing bid coming simply previous midnight Japanese time on Monday and carrying a so-called hammer value of $5,505,247. Including within the 20% purchaser’s premium that REA collects pushes the official sale value to $6,606,296.

Not less than in the interim, the customer stays nameless, as does the vendor.

The 110-year-old card—which was a part of a non-public assortment for greater than three many years earlier than it was offered at public sale in 2012 for $1.2 million after which offered once more privately within the final couple of years—had acquired a grade of VG 3 by the authentication company SGC. That score (on a scale of ten) instructed it was in distinctive situation relative to most of the 60 or so different copies of the cardboard thought to exist at this time.

Nonetheless, whereas high-end Wagners have been promoting for seven figures for greater than a decade, the brand new report value is a minimum of partly a mirrored image of a outstanding increase within the card market over the past yr and a half. And whilst some segments of the market—similar to fashionable basketball playing cards—have cooled off over the previous few months, uncommon and classic playing cards stay ascendant. Latest notable sports activities card gross sales embody a one-of-a-kind Luka Doncic rookie card (which offered for $4.6 million in March), an autographed LeBron James rookie card ($5.2 million, April) and a Wayne Gretzky rookie card ($3.75 million, Could). One other T206 Honus Wagner offered for $3.75 million in Could, and ESPN reported final month that there had been a minimum of a dozen $1 million card gross sales since February.