The Paul Leonard Wagner sold in 1993 for approximately $32,000 is definitely card # 39a (and also # 39b) in the T206Resource Wagner Gallery. This card was offered by REA in June 1995 (it was Lot 937). When offered, I nicknamed it “The Cooperstown Wagner” because it was prominently displayed at Tom Catal’s “Mickey’s Place”, an institution in Cooperstown, and had been seen by many thousands of baseball fans in Cooperstown. The minimum bid was $39,000 (a lot at the time, now a rounding error). I was OK with the high minimum bid (though it was much more than I preferred; after all, it was a Wagner!) The consignor was fine if it sold or didn’t sell. I was happy to be able to offer it but knew going in that with this minimum bid it was 50/50 if it was going to sell.
On the night of the auction close it still didn’t have the opening bid (strictly due to the high minimum bid) and finally a very prominent collector/dealer (who is still around and a valued member of Net54) made a reasonable proposal just before we shut down the auction to get a slight break on the price all of which came directly from REA’s commission but allowed us to sell the card and make everyone happy. By memory (and I could be off a little but this is what I recall) the total sale price was $39,500.
When the card came up for auction again in 2014 as part of a massive collection of 3500 T206s assembled by a collector in Chesapeake, SCP dubbed the collection “The Chesapeake Find” and renamed the Wagner “The Chesapeake Wagner”.
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