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An inside look at why the T206 Honus Wagner card sold for a record $6.6 million

He played hard, fast and well, belting triples and stealing bases at an age when most ballplayers would have settled into the lucrative role of power-hitting DH — if such a thing existed when Johannes Peter “Honus” Wagner terrorized National League pitchers from 1897 to 1917.

Today, Wagner is best known as the unsmiling face of the “T206 Wagner” trading card that since the 1930s has emerged as the white whale, Holy Grail and El Dorado sought by collectors.

The card long ago left the provenance of baseball fans and card collectors and has entered the wider cultural consciousness because of the enormous sums paid for the little piece of rare old cardboard.

And it’s back in the news after an anonymous buyer spent a record $6.6 million Sunday to buy one of the better versions of the card in an auction staged by Robert Edward Auctions, which is based in Chester, N.J.

That price, which includes a 20 percent buyer’s premium kept by the auction house, is now the most ever paid for a trading card. The sale surpassed the $5.2 million that serial entrepreneur Rob Gough paid in February for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card, and for the $5.2 million spent in April on a 2003 Upper Deck LeBron James rookie card that included an autograph and jersey swatch.

The old record price for a T206 Wagner was $3.75 million, set in May.

Brian Dwyer, owner and president of Robert Edward Auctions and who brokered the T206 sale, spoke with The Athletic on Tuesday about the auction and the state of the trading card industry that’s been white-hot since the pandemic began in early 2020.

“I didn’t know it would shatter the record but believed strongly this would challenge the record. I was very bullish on this example,” Dwyer said. “I knew that it would be a big result. I think it’s safe to say it outperformed my expectations.”

Bidding on the Wagner began July 23 at $1 million. A few days after the auction began, bids had reached $4 million.

“We knew that we had something special after the first week of the auction,” Dwyer said.

It was in the final 72 hours when the record was surpassed.

Why?

Part of it is the mythology of this particular card, and part of it is because of capitalism.

Vintage and rare cards have emerged as a safe alternative asset for monied collectors and for wealthy people seeking to diversify beyond stocks, bonds, real estate, fine art and wines, and rare watches and cars.

“I think you’re seeing a move toward embracing collectibles as a natural part of a portfolio,” Dwyer said. “There is a large portion of the collecting population that views these as investments and safe stores of value. As more people embrace these items as investments, you’re going to see rising prices.”

Interest in such cards — and riskier investment into cards of young stars, which also are selling in the millions of dollars — has been fueled in part by the resurgence of the card hobby since 2016. That was the point the industry had recovered from the disastrous over-production era of the 1990s and entered a renaissance. The pandemic has taken the hobby into overdrive for both rank-and-file collectors and for the ultra-wealthy spending $1 million or more for a piece of cardboard.

Of the cards that have been publicly known to sell for at least $1 million, all but one has occurred since August 2020.

The T206 Wagner and the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle are widely considered the blue-chip cards sought by those with the means to acquire them. Even crummy versions of the cards sell for thousands of dollars.

The Mantle card is popular because Mantle’s iconic in living memory and for the card’s backstory: Topps dumped many of them into the Hudson River after being unable to sell the nickel packs that year, unknowingly creating future artificial scarcity.

Wagner, on the other hand, was a tremendous player but before America entered World War I, so before today’s collectors were born.

He was a fleet-footed Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop who retired in 1917 and was in the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s inaugural 1936 class of inductees, thanks to leading the National League in batting average for eight of his 21 seasons in the majors (check out Joe Posnanski’s profile of Wagner and the card from 2020).

Though there is no definitive evidence, some of the mystique around the T206 Wagner card is rooted in what might be an apocryphal story that he didn’t want his name and image attached to tobacco products — the T206 card was produced by the American Tobacco Co. as part of a series from 1909 to 1911. So, the card was made in very limited numbers, and few survived. And even fewer are in good shape.

There also is a theory that the endorsement-minded Wagner demanded the card be removed from production because he wasn’t being paid for it, or not enough.

Regardless, the card is rare and very old and has a lucrative mythology built around it, particularly over the past 30-plus years as celebrities such as Wayne Gretzky have owned versions of it. There are reportedly only 50 to 60 known T206 Wagner cards that have been graded by the industry’s handful of professional grading services, and few are in good condition.

The card that broke the record was graded a VG 3 by authentication company SGC in 2012, and it sold for $1.23 million in a public auction, and then sold twice for higher, undisclosed amounts in private sales before the record-setting sale Sunday.

Such sales attract media attention and further cement the card into public — and investor — consciousness.

“It’s the iconic piece of cardboard in the hobby,” said Ezra Levine, CEO of the Collectable marketplace app that offers fractional ownership shares of rare sports items. “When people think of sports cards, they often think of the Honus Wagner card.”

And with rare cards selling at a premium, it’s not unusual that one of the best T206 examples would set the record — one certain to be broken before long.

The seller — identified only as an East Coast-based sports collector familiar with the industry — contacted the auction house in early July with questions about pricing and timing, Dwyer said.

“He’d been observing the industry trends and thought the timing might be right for this card to perform very well,” Dwyer said.

During the auction cycle, the card was on display at the annual National Sports Collectors Convention in suburban Chicago last month. It traveled to the show in an armored car and had around-the-clock armed security, Dwyer said.

Does he expect the card to flip for an even greater price in the near future?

“I don’t. Certainly, the highest-graded examples don’t come up very frequently. They tend to go into permanent collections. I think it’s likely off the market for some time,” Dwyer said.

If and when it does come up again for sale, the price is expected to be even higher. The industry’s first price guide, published in the 1930s, listed the T206 for $50 — the highest estimate of any card at the time. It’s only gone up since.

“The Wagner is a card that has such a long pool of data to observe that I think the trajectory for that card is only upwards,” Dwyer said. “It’s always been atop the list of most prestigious, most sought-after cards.”

It’s said that no T206 buyer has ever sold it for less than what they paid, Levine said, so that makes the card even more desirable to some investors. And with a wave of fresh institutional and individual money entering the hobby over the past 18 months, all seeking these rare cards, prices will continue to rise.

“There is so much capital coming into this market,” said Levine, who has been trying to land a Wagner for his business to sell.

Investors want investment-grade blue-chip cards irrespective of price, Levine said, and it’s only a matter of time before a card sells for $10 million or more.

Of course, Levine and Dwyer and the rest of the auction industry stand to benefit from such thinking — and there is risk that, like any market, it can fall at some point — but history so far has proved them correct when it comes to the T206.

“It bridges the gap between the collecting and non-collecting population. They’ve heard of it. That’s the appeal of a card like that. They may own no other cards. They may display it alongside a Picasso,” Dwyer said.

It’s not always purely investment-minded buy-and-flip people writing fat checks for Wagners and other almost audibly expensive cards.

“You can have a very wealthy buyer who is in it for the fun of it,” Dwyer said. “There is a place for a lot of different approaches in the hobby.”

The 20 percent buyer’s premium, which is the fee kept by the auction house, means Dwyer’s company — he bought it in 2016 from founder Robert Lifson — made about $1.32 million on Sunday’s record-setting sale.

Auctioneers, brokers, card shops and the manufacturers continue to profit from consumer demand for everything from the latest retail packs at Target to the rarest vintage cards sold at auction.

“We’ve benefited from this partially renewed interest among collectors and new entrants into the market,” Dwyer said, adding that his company is seeing multiples of three- and four-times revenue in various business lines. That’s led to investment in new technology and more hiring, he said.

The auction house had done a number of $1 million-plus private sales over the years, Dwyer said, including a different Wagner with the same quality grade that sold in 2015 for $1.32 million.

Without disclosing details, he said the seven-figure sales have included well-known cards and some that wouldn’t be recognized as worth that much at public auction.

Dwyer said he expects the sports card and collectibles wave to continue for some time, driven in part by the media attention on sales such as the Honus Wager and other rarities.

“It’s great for us, obviously, but more largely it’s great for the hobby,” he said.