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Honus Wagner Tobacco-Card Proof Is Offered at Baseball All-Star Auction
The proof strip that produced the most valuable baseball card, featuring Honus Wagner, and cards of two other Hall of Fame players is up for sale in an auction attached to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.
The strip has the pictures of Wagner, Mordecai Brown and Cy Young, along with former players Frank Bowerman and Johnny Kling.
It is listed at $121,000 on-line by Hunt Auctions and will be sold on July 13 at a live auction during the All-Star FanFest in Anaheim, California.
The pictures in the proof strip were used for the T-206 card series, issued by the American Tobacco Co. from 1909 through 1911. The Wagner card, the most expensive card in existence, has fetched as much as $2.8 million.
David Hunt, president of Exton, Pennsylvania-based Hunt Auctions, said in an interview that the strip should sell for around $250,000. The proofs were discovered among the Wagner family estate and cosigned for this auction from a private collection. It has been certified as authentic after being professionally graded by Sportscard Guaranty, a Parsippany, New Jersey-based company that authenticates and grades sports memorabilia.
Wagner was an eight-time National League batting champion, who played with the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900 through 1917 after starting his career with the Louisville Colonels.
The Wagner card itself has become an item of rarity because it was recalled after very limited production. One theory is that the card was recalled because Wagner objected to the use of his photograph in selling cigarettes. There are between 50 and 100 T-206 Wagner cards in existence, according to Hunt Auctions.
Economic Impact
Hunt said the problems that rattled the economy in recent years didn’t have a huge impact on the market for high-end sports memorabilia.
“Amazingly, it’s remained very, very stable throughout our market during this entire economic situation,” he said. “I think that’s a testament to sports in general. If you think about sports, whether there’s wars, tough economic times, there’s still sports. Do I think it would have brought more? I don’t.”
In May, the rookie card of Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg in the ‘s Topps 2010 Bowman Chrome Superfractor collection was sold for $16,403 on EBay Inc.’s on- line auction site. Hunt said the Strasburg card never will approach the status of Wagner’s, no matter how good the young pitcher with a 100-mile-a-hour fastball becomes.
“They weren’t created back then to be worth money -- they were products,” he said. “Now these things are created to last and be in perfect condition. They’re actually being created to be marketable pieces.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Barry Rothbard in New York at brothbard@bloomberg.net
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