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Posted By: Ryan Christoff

Hal,

So the 1920's incarnation of Wagner cigars were $.05 just like most other cigars of the era, but the 1897 ones were $.10?

No wonder they tried, without much success if cigar price is any indication, to resurrect the Wagner cigar of 20+ years earlier. From 1897 to 1900 Hans Wagner was a good baseball player....and a GREAT cigar!

Interesting strategy, though. Use the same imagery of Wagner with the Louisville team, but change the name of the cigars from "Hans Wagner" to "Honus Wagner". That way you can ask half the price of what they sold for 20+ years earlier.

Regarding the Hunt Auction, the picture of the box in your 4:31 PM post (unless you edit your post) shows a box they sold in 2000. In their description they call it "circa 1903", the same year as Wagner's E107 rookie card.

Two years earlier they auctioned your trade card along with the one of the other two known examples of the cigar box (in two separate lots). I believe that box and your trade card were discovered together in Louisville. Correct me if I'm wrong about that because I'm not 100% sure.

So if the box in the Robert Edward Auction is actually post-1919 then there are three possibilities:

1. The REA box is the same one that was discovered along with your trade card. That would seem to point towards a late 1920's date of the trade card due to the price increase from $.05 to $.10.

2. The REA box is not the same one, but is still one of the 3 known examples of the box, all of which seem to date from the same period. This would also point towards a post-1919 date of the trade card. This seems like the most likely scenario to me since the REA box was part of the Halper collection which sold in 1999. Halper may have bought the box in 1998 and sold it in 1999 but it seems unlikely to me.

3. The box that was discovered with your trade card is completely different than the other two and is, in fact, from the 1897-1900 period but no one noticed how different it was and chose to lump it in with the other two examples of the box to come up with a total of 3 examples. It would make sense that this box would be different because the cigars must have been amazing at $.10 a pop in the 19th century. The box could have been much more ornate than the other two. If this is the case and no one noticed it was a different box, then it is defintely possible that the box the trade card was found with is from Wagner's days in Louisville, while the other two boxes are obviously from 20 years later.

I guess you couldn't have picked a better time to start collecting minor league cards with the Baltimore News Ruth being available. Hopefully your Wagner sells on ebay so you can afford it as your description states. I'm sure you plan to fully disclose to the high bidder the possibility of the trade card being produced later than it states on the PSA label and are going to provide them with links to this thread and the box in the Robert Edward Auction. Making it a private auction wasn't to keep others from contacting the high bidder to let them know about the doubts that exist surrounding the trade card, but to keep them from receiving duplicate e-mails that give them the same links and information that you are already planning to share with them.

-Ryan