The Honus Wagner card talked about here a few times, recently up for auction, has sold.
the online auction saw the record-breaking sale of a 1909-11 Honus
Wagner T206 baseball card for $609,294. The PSA 1 example has been
referred to as “The Original Wagner” based on the fact that it was the first of its kind to be featured in mainstream media in 1930.
The card was purchased by Georgia businessman J.
Ross Greene for $48,500 in 1996 ($75,586 in today’s dollars). The
$609,294 price is the most ever paid for a “Poor” condition Wagner and
over $200,000 higher than the last PSA 1 Wagner that sold in May of
2013. It also bested a PSA 2 sold last month. [Link to story]
I was not the winning bidder. My birthday is coming up, however, so you never know. Maybe someone purchased it on my behalf.
The card is expected to sell for over $500,000. Not a bad take considering the owner purchased the card 21 years ago for $48,500.
Looks like a good ROI.
I once bought 20 Corey Patterson PSA 10 rookie cards as an investment. "Who's Corey Patterson?" you may ask. I know who he is. He's a guy who lost a lot of my money.
There are 5,257 known possible card combinations in the full T206 set. Combinations consist of players, poses, and advertisers on the card backs. I have approximately 20!
Card collector, David Hall, has a collection of over 5,000 of these combinations, the largest collection known. The collection is estimated to be worth over $10 million.
Later this week, a few of the rarest cards in the $10 million collection will be on display at the Long Beach Expo.
Hall, the President of Collectors Universe, began attacking the T206 set
with a vengeance just nine years ago, chasing not only each of the more
than 500 subjects in the famous tobacco issue, but each of the
different advertising backs. No other collector as assembled even 3,000
different.
. . . . .
The collection includes 55 Ty Cobb cards (out of 57 possible), all 31
Walter Johnson possibilities, 40 out of 41 Christy Mathewson, 38 out of
a possible 39 Cy Young cards and two of the four possible rare Eddie
Plank variations.
“I was an animal about this,” he joked. “The dealers found out and
would offer me cards. I advertised to buy and would go to the National
and look at everyone’s cards. Everyone knew. I had a bit of a target
on my back.”
. . . . .
Hall said he’s hoping that the Expo will give collectors a chance to
learn “how much fun T206s are” even if you don’t have the disposable
income to build a collection like his. His advice? “Do your homework
and buy what you like,” he stated. “With the internet, prices are pretty
transparent now. Don’t buy what someone else tells you to buy. Just
buy what you enjoy.”
Hall says he's close to being done and putting the collection up for sale since adding to it is nearly impossible now. At least it's a hobby where you can retain some value, not all wasted money, which is nice. That's what I tell my wife anyway.
Greene, a 76-year-old married father of three and grandfather of
eight, said that he tried to be pragmatic about letting go of a
treasure.
“I don’t think they collect baseball cards in heaven,” said Greene, a
financial services consultant. “So you’ve got to part with things at
some point in time. I thought this was a good time.”
The Wagner
card is part of a collection of more than 100,000 cards and memorabilia
that Greene, is auctioning off. He plans to use the proceeds to provide
for his retirement, help fund the education of his grandchildren and to
support a variety of Christian ministries.
. . . . . .
Greene believes he amassed a collection of perhaps 2,500 cards,
stored in a shoebox. But about 30 years later, he went back home to
retrieve them, only to learn his parents had tossed them out. He
suspects they might be worth between $500,000 and $1 million today.
Dismayed,
Greene bought a friend’s old collection of about 3,000 cards for $500.
In the early ’90s, when the card market began to pick up and he realized
that the value of his friend’s collection had increased several times
from his purchase price, he began to buy other collections to put
together sets from the ’50s and ’60s.
“I’m a fastidious, anal guy,
so I had everything listed and in boxes and in books and in order and
by collectible value and what have you,” Greene said.
. . . . . . .
In 1996, Greene saw an ad in a collecting magazine publicizing the auction of the rare Wagner card.
Greene called into the phone auction, which he said had reached
$37,000. He made one bid, which was surpassed. At the time, the Greenes
were building a house and their daughter, Meredith, was about to get
married. He called his wife, Lynne.
“It was the worst time in the
world to think about doing what I was doing,” he said. “So I figured it
was in a situation where I needed to ask permission rather than to try
to get forgiveness later on.”
She gave her blessing, and what he determined would be his final bid, $48,500, proved successful.
The "my parents threw away a fortune in my old collection" line is kind of like the fisherman's story of "the one that got away." But he certainly seems to have pursued with passion the card collecting hobby. Hope his investment pays off! And kudos to his wife for playing along!
One of the cool things about T-206 cards is the journey through time they take you on.
Today's baseball is so slick, manicured, expensive, and media-driven that it takes away much of the "romance" of the game.
T-206 takes us back to a simpler age, when a bunch of guys went out and had fun, got drunk, and gambled! There were no high stakes, no multi-million dollar contracts, no tabloid coverage of anyone's love life. It was just baseball.
The actual story of baseball wasn't quite so romantic though! It wasn't as pure as many make it out to be. Dan Imler, vice-president of SCP Auctions, said baseball “was a rocky endeavor. It was fraught with corruption, mismanagement
and gambling was rampant. Professional baseball was really in peril.”
John Thorn, a Major League Baseball historian, said: “Drunkenness, open pool-selling at the ballparks and game-fixing were commonplace.”
At a crucial point in baseball's history, a man named William Hulbert decided to make the game more orderly, a little more respectable, so that it might have a legitimate future.
William Ambrose Hulbert was a grocer and coal trader. He loved
baseball and became owner of the Chicago franchise. He grew frustrated
with mismanagement and players jumping from team to team during seasons,
selling their services to the highest bidder. He convinced other owners
that baseball needed regulation.
Hulbert’s secretary, Nicholas Young, summarized the 1876 meeting, and
baseball founding luminary Harry Wright took minute-by-minute notes.
Fifty years later, in 1926, Young’s son Robert turned over those
founding documents to the National League. Later, they were given to the
family of a National League executive.
Time to break out the old checkbook! The world's most famous and valuable baseball card is coming up for auction once again beginning May 24 through June 10 (click here for the auction site).
Why is this card so famous? It might have more to do with its lineage than anything else.
it’s believed the card’s first mention in a mainstream news publication came in November, 1930 in the Newark Evening News.
Past owners of the card include sports writers and noted early collectors Willie Ratner and Wirt Gammon, as well as Bill Haber, who wrote card backs at Topps.
“From the day I purchased the card until early 2014, I only knew that
the owner before me, Bill Haber, worked for Topps and wrote the copy on
the back of Topps cards each year,” said Greene. “After learning the
noteworthy lineage, I knew the Wagner, which I had initially viewed as
simply a baseball card, albeit a much sought after one, now took on
significantly greater importance to me. I realized that I was in
possession of a true item of baseball and sports card collecting history.”
The card is presumed to sell for six-figures. It is also presumed to sell to someone who is not me.
$600,000 for a PSA 2 Honus Wagner
$76,800 for a PSA 4 Eddie Plank
$40,800 for an EX graded Sherry "Magie" error card.
The complete auction sold over $5 million worth of cardboard. Many other card sets were represented.
Hardest to believe for me was the PSA 10 1993 Upper Deck SP Derek Jeter rookie for $54,576! That's insane! I'm all for high prices in old cards, but it doesn't seem right that a card that recent should be at that level. I'm guessing that guy loses some money on that deal!
Then again, I hate the stupid Yankees so I'm probably biased.
In March of 2016, a family in South Carolina was going through their great-grandfather's house after his death and stumbled upon one of the greatest baseball card finds of all time.
In a tattered paper bag just about to be thrown out, seven T-206 cards fell out, including a Ty Cobb rarity--the back says “TY COBB – KING OF THE SMOKING TOBACCO WORLD” in green ink.
These cards were put up for auction and have now all sold. Get a load of the haul this family made!
"While individual prices for all of the cards haven’t been disclosed,
Snyder says they realized a combined total of “approximately $3 million.” At least one-third of that is believed to have been spent on
the highest graded example."
From an old paper bag to $3 million just like that! If you're looking for a reason to go visit your grandpa, here ya go!
