The T206 Honus Wagner card has long been viewed as “The Holy Grail” of sports cards. Highly graded versions of the elusive card have gone for sums in excess of $6M. But perhaps the most impressive testament to the 123 year old card’s desirability is the fact that an absolutely mangled version just sold for $475,960.
The staggering sum was paid at an SCP auction this month, and earned the buyer a PSA “Genuine” copy of the card. This particular version of the iconic piece of cardboard was ripped in half, with the lower half of Wagner’s face and the right side of his body missing altogether. Hence the “Genuine” grade, which PSA only issues to cards with extreme damage.
The sub PSA1 level guarantees the card’s authenticity but nothing more. While paying almost half a million dollars for only half a card seems outrageous, the fact is that copies of the T206 card haven’t sold for anything less than $1M since the sports card craze kicked into high gear once more in 2020. Making the price mathematically right on par for what other copies have fetched on the open market.
While Wagner was a Hall of Fame inductee in 1936, the collectibility of his card has very little to do with his on field prowess and everything to do with scarcity. The Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop had a disagreement with the American Tobacco Company which distributed the cards back in the early 1900’s. As a result, while other players in the T206 series saw roughly 16,000 copies of their cards issued, only 50-200 copies of the Wagner card were ever distributed.
With so few copies available, collectors have fought tooth and nail to add a copy to their collection. One of the more famous copies of the card was the “Gretzky” card, which was sold to Wayne Gretzky in 1991 for $451K. The same card traded hands multiple times over the years and was sold to Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick for $2.8M in 2011.
When it comes to sports cards, condition is everything. That is of course unless you’re one of the most iconic baseball cards on the planet.