Honus Wagner Card Owner, Ross Greene

An Honus Wagner card is up for auction right now. Here is an article about the owner of the card and why he is selling. Here are some tidbits from the larger article:

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!

Baseball's Founding Documents up for Auction

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.

 These documents are now up for auction. It is expected to go for several million dollars.

Original T206 Honus Wagner Auction Begins This Month

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.

Memory Lane Auction Results

A recent Memory Lane Auction put up individual cards from a nearly complete T-206 set. Here are some of the results from the auction:

$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.

Auction Results from the Lucky-7 Find

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!