T206 Honus Wagner SGC 3 What is the Over/Under
 

Hi Everyone

REA is auctioning a 1909 T206 SGC 3 Honus Wagner Card.

What is the Over/Under on this Card with Buyers Premium?

Will it set any records?

Of course it will set records. I think the over/under is $4.5/$5.5 MM.

Sorry. My Bad.

To Clarify will it set the new Record for Highest price paid for a baseball card. Passing the Sale of the 1914 Baltimore News Ruth that recently sold for $6 Million?

Whatever the selling price, at least we'll know it will be legit.

I agree, Jay. I was going to say $5m.

The Ruth is a much scarcer card of a much better player and is Ruth’s first card. The only thing the Wagner has going for it is that it is part of a major set. I see no rational reason for it to pass the Ruth, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

A Baltimore news Ruth sold for 6M?!
 

When? Where? How did I miss it!

Wagner 3 - $5M

I am thinking of going to 6M on it. Now to just come up with the 6M....

Seriously, I think 4.76M to 5.67M, but who knows. It's a really nice card for a Wags...

.

Seems I'm in line with the consensus of 5 million. Probably means it goes for 2 million or 15 million with my prognostication track record.

Does selling a one percent interest in a card with 20,000 shares offered at $3/share count as a sale of a card?

I bet that 1% is in the red. Sometimes I crack myself up.

ignore me, I misread your post

This card is the face of the hobby. 6M


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Some would say that the T206 Wagner is a better looking card as well.

T206 Honus Wagner SGC 3 What is the Over/Under
 

I will take $4MM


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I will take $4MM

Give me 440/400 on the over…

It's also a card of a major leaguer.

Wagner
 

YOU GUYS ARE KILLING ME!!

I owned this exact card in the 70's!

Mike Aronstein (of TCMA fame)whose son Andrew is a member here, turned it up on Long Island I believe. The owner would not sell it to Mike. But he mentioned that the "convention" (which is what they were called in those days) in Detroit was going on and that they had an auction there.

So Mike called Lloyd Toerpe, Jay Barry or Frank Nagy or one of the other Detroit guys running the show in 1973 and it was auctioned off there. I won it for $1,100 outbidding Joe and Karen Michalowicz. I am NOT missing any zero's.

I sold it along with the rest of my collection to Barry Halper in 1976, it was the first of three Wagner's he owned. It disappeared from the hobby, at least as far as I knew until it showed up in a Bill Goodwin auction a few years back where if memory serves it sold for $1.2 M. I asked Bill about it and he said it was consigned by a guy in Houston.

I contacted Brian at REA today and he tells me it changed ownership once since the Goodwin auction.

I'd be curious to know how it got from Halper to Houston. Most likely a trade after he picked up his second Wagner. Didn't he donate one to the HOF? I know Barry traded my Roberts, Konstanky and Stanky Topps Current All Stars for Yankee World Series rings so he did trade.

Maybe this history will tug at the heartstrings of the consignor and he will honor the $1100 I paid for it so it can go back into the hands of the first collector who owned it. 😁

A bunch (maybe more than a bunch) of members of Net54 should put their money together and win the card. I'm not kidding. Then in 5 or so years, sell it and everyone would make a lot of money. Sometimes you just gotta say WTF and be completely serious. Again, I'm not kidding.

Fred-If you don’t mind me asking, why did you sell the collection when you did? Did you just lose interest or did Halper’s bid just look too attractive. I think I’m about the same age as you and I know that I sold a coin collection at about the same time in my life.

Jay

Fred is correct that my dad discovered the card on Long Island in 1973. Not only that but I still have the hand-written receipt he received on a piece of notebook paper when he purchased the card -- two days after the show ended on July 22, 1973.

According to the Sep-Oct 1973 issue of Bob Jaspersen's Sport Fan this was the first Wagner ever sold at auction "at a convention" and I could be wrong but would think the first ever sold at auction period:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...439abe9f_c.jpg

Ruth a “much better player” than Honus Wagner ?

Waaat ? :eek:

It’s the Mona Lisa of all cards
 

My guess is over 5.5m

It’s the 1 card that even non collectors have heard of, the Mona Lisa of all cards

I’m guessing in the neighborhood of 4-5+million, but who knows?

The Baltimore news Ruth should be the most valuable card in existence in my opinion, but there was no sale for 6 million. 1 percent of the card was offered at that valuation I suppose.

I’d love to see a Baltimore news actually hit the open market in a forum like REA and see what it would actually bring. If it was in decent shape , maybe over 6 million! It’s such a rare card.

I’d rather own this Wagner than the “psa 8”

I would wager that the Wagner goes for $6M+.


Steve

Jay:

Halper came onto the scene out of nowhere in the early 70's and was paying three times what things were going for at the time so everyone was selling him stuff.

He lived about 20 minutes from me at the time and asked if he could come over to see my collection. When he did he asked "how much for the Wagner"? I said I'd never sell the Wagner, I'd have to sell the entire collection. He asked how much for the entire collection?

Well, in those days that never happened. I sat down and wrote out long hand everything I had. T200, T201, T205, T206, T207 complete, most Goudy sets including Lajoie, Play Balls, tons of regionals, Topps and Bowman complete except for 52 Hi #'s ( I refused to pay $3 each for them!), Exhibits, Topps test sets, uncut sheets etc. etc. Came up with a price took 15% off as was the custom in those days if you were buying something big/expensive and gave Halper the price.

Without blinking or negotiating he said "fine" and ended up paying me with quite a few postal money orders made out to me from Joe Tinker, Frank Chance. and other old players... you get the idea.

I was 26 years old, getting married, and figured it was time. No one else would have been able to buy the entire collection, so off it went. My only mistake was figuring the "current" value and not the 3X $$ Halper was paying at the time.

Saying all that, the sale allowed me a few years later to start a business that evolved into more businesses and I was able to retire at age 55.

So, I would have had to live in a tent for 45 years in order to cash in now and sell the Wagner for the Millions of dollars you all are throwing around that is making me SICK!!! :)

Fred

Great stories, Fred - thanks for sharing. Must be quite a thrill to at least know you owned it for a few years!

Great story Fred and one of the reasons I love this sub, hands down the greatest member base. No other group even comes close. If it makes you feel any better I sold a 14CJ Wagner that would grade a 4-5 today when I was a broke 21 year old trying to make rent for $250. You do what you have to do when circumstances demand it. Congrats on owning the nicest $1110 Wagner I've ever seen.

Looking forward do the auction will sell for a big amount.

If an undersized Goudey Ruth sells for 4, this is going a lot higher than 5 IMO.

Fred, sincere thanks for sharing that story.

The first collector who owned it?
 

Wouldn't the collector that Mike A got it from be the first who owned it?

But seriously Fred - Sorry for your pain!

Is that really in doubt? Ruth dwarfs Honus in nearly every offensive stat. 183 WAR vs 130. Wagner's best season for WAR would be Ruth's 7th best. Ruth's career OPS+ is higher than Wagner's single season best.

Wagner was an incredible player but, yes, the gap really was that big.

I agree, and I don't follow pre-war much but I think it will finish higher than the 6 mil Ruth.

Fred: Thanks for sharing that story. As you tell it it sounds like you did just fine with that sale. That money helped kick start a career that led to what sounds like a successful life. It must have been a wonderful time to collect when you started, so much available and actual face to face interaction being required to add to your collection. I started my collecting much later in life, around 1990, but even then I remember the incredible variety of scarce cards that were available at shows. Stay well my friend and hopefully some day we run into one another.

Jay

My bet is that a member here has his eye on that card and I wish him all the luck in acquiring what would be a a truly exceptional T206 Wagner.

Bill James ranks Honus Wagner as the #2 player of all time and his 1908 season as the greatest ever. Hall of Fame voters gave Wagner the same number of votes as Ruth. It may be your opinion that the gap is big, but I and many others strongly disagree.

The numbers don't lie. And James is wrong about Wagner's 1908.

Live ball vs deadball

Not only live ball vs dead ball, but I don't understand how all the complicated modern metrics could even be applied so far back.

How could you really judge Wagner's defensive WAR from back in 1899 in the same manner as today? I'm guessing that more chances is assumed to mean a better range, but is it really that simple?

That Ruth was better than Wagner, or by how much, isn't the issue. This is the great American baseball card, a cultural icon, in a way the Ruth is not.

Let's just put it this way: The T206 Wagner is to baseball cards what Ruth is to ballplayers.

Very well put.

Everyone has their own opinions and that is what makes the hobby great.Personally, given the choice of the two I would take the Ruth every time.

Every one of us would like to have back just about everything we ever sold in our time in the hobby. But presumably the money we got at the time served a good purpose--yours certainly did--and not one of us imagined in our wildest dreams what would happen to the market for those things. Our generation of collectors (I'm 75) have many stories similar to yours, Fred, in every genre. Things were cheap in the 1960s and 1970s, we got the thrill of putting together some amazing collections for very little, then when the market started accelerating we sold them to start businesses and families, travel, enjoy our youths, etc. How lucky we--and you--were to have had the privilege of that life experience.

This one has traceable provenance....that should drive the price up a bit :)

Are all the Wagners other than the HOF one owned by individuals? It would be a pretty cool item for a corporation to own and display, I imagine some of them own some pretty high powered art and have major security anyhow.

+1


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I disagree. Displayed art will evoke a reaction, even if you know nothing about the piece. Displayed art also tends to be large and can be seen just in passing. For 90% of the people the card would mean nothing other than the company spending lots of money, on a little piece of cardboard, that could have gone to increase wages or improve conditions.

Houston?
 

It may be possible that if this card ended up in Houston it was a part of the original "Texan Collection" that is now being sold by Hunt auctions. Jeff W