1909-11 T206

The PSA 1.5 1909-11 T206 Sweet Caporal Honus Wagner’s History

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I ran across this raw T206 Honus Wagner in Christie’s October 1992 Sports Memorabilia catalog.

I’ve been enjoying tracing T206 Wagner’s sales history lately (number 28 and the Frank Nagy Wagner). Thanks to the Wagner Sales History page and Wagner Gallery on T206Resrouce.com, it’s been made a lot easier. They label this particular example as number 45.

Like I said, Christie’s offered this one raw back in 1992. They provided the following description:

Front depicts Wagner in a color lithograph against a warm orange background with white border, the bottom stating “WAGNER, PITTSBURGH.” The reverse reads “SWEET CAPORAL CIGARETTES, THE STANDARD FOR YEARS” trimmed in red-lined border-2 5/8 x 1 7/16 in.-good to very good.

The T206 Wagner card is the most sought after and avidly pursued collectible card in the hobby today. It has been widely reported that Honus Wagner was vehemently against smoking and therefore requested the withdrawal of his card.However, according to his granddaughter, Ms. Leslie Blair, Wagner objected to the fact that children would have to purchase cigarettes in order to obtain the card; actually, Wanger himself chewed tobacco. To date, fewer than 40 T206 Wagner cards are known to exist.

The expected sales price was $100,000-125,000, but I have yet to confirm what it actually sold for.

The next public sale I have data for is when Heritage Auctions sold the card, now graded Fr 1.5 by PSA, for $2.28M in May 2021. Unfortunately, they didn’t include any information about this Wagner’s provenance.

Goldin then re-sold the card a little over a year later, in October 2022, for $3.72M (a nice 17 month ~$1.5M flip).

Please let me know if you have any more info about Wagner number 45.

T206 1910 White Border Near Complete Set Of 520 Cards

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The expected price of the 520-card T206 White Border near complete set in Sotheby’s Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia auction in 1993 was…$30,000-$40,000.

Here’s the lot’s description:

T206 1910 White Border Set, near complete set of 520 cards (missing the big three, Wagner, Plank, and Magie), a monumental task to put together all 520 cards was accomplished by a collector looking for uniformity of condition throughout the set, only about 70 cards are less than excellent condition, about 20 of those are in definite need of replacing due to creases or excessive wear, approximately 450 cards are excellent or better, the Demmitt, O’Hara and Elberfeld have creases and are only fair condition, Kleinow Boston is near mint to mint, Lungren, Chicago is a strong excellent to mint. Cobb (red) and Cobb (yellow) are excellent, the green Cobb has a hairline crease and is very good to excellent and the Cobb bat off the shoulder is very clean and strong excellent to mint, Smith, Chicago and Boston is excellent to mint, Dahlen, Brooklyn is excellent to mint, and G. Brown Washington is excellent condition, several Southern Leaguers need replacing (about 25), overall the set is excellent condition with numerous cards in excellent to mint condition.

A PSA 2 Graded T206 Wagner’s History

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I’ve highlighted the history of a few T206 Wagners on the blog. Here’s another, graded 2 by PSA, with an interesting history from raw to Mastro to Memory Lane.

The picture above is from Mastro’s September 2000 catalog; the card sold for $74,918. Here’s the card and full description.

Note the reference to the PSA 8 Wanger I highlighted in a post called Memorabilia Madness.

The T206Resource, which numbers this particular Wagner card as number 28, includes this photo of it in raw form (though it could be a cropped scan of the graded card), so it was likely graded around the time of the Mastro auction.

Update from the original post (based on my note in the comments) later in the day on July 19, 2024: The PSA Flip type (design) with the Collectors Universe hologram on the back didn’t come out until around 1999/2000, no more than a year before the Mastro Auction.

This Wagner was then consigned through Memory Lane, who tried to sell it for $775k via an eBay Buy-it-Now listing in January 2012 before selling it in May 2012 for $654,500 and again in May 2017 for $600,000.

PS, the other T206 Wagner that has been highlighted on the blog is Frank Nagy’s (Wagner 12 on the T206Resource).

If anyone has any more pre-graded historical information about Wagner 28, please let me know.