Frank Nagy

Frank Nagy’s Signed 1933 Goudey Mel Ott Card

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I ran across this super cool signed 1933 Goudey Mel Ott card in Mastro’s March 2006 Classic Collector Auction catalog. Why so cool? It was part of Frank Nagy’s collection!

Unfortunately, it got reholdered without the Nagy designation before PWCC sold it for $2,212 in August 2019.

Given how hot on-card autos are getting these days, that price looks like a steal for a Pop 2 card.

The Frank Nagy 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner

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Here’s the Frank Nagy 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner as presented in MastroNet’s Sporst Auctions of Distinction in December 2005. GAI noted the card’s lineage on the reverse flip.

The card’s description in the catalog was pretty fluffy, which I’m not sure is ever really needed for cards of this magnitude. It sold for $456,057.

In a 2007 article about Nagy, Sports Collectors Digest shared that Nagy got the Wagner from Preston Orem in the early 1960s for $100. The T206Resource and net54 board members report that the card is now slabbed via SGC at a 1/2 grade lower of 3.

To add a bit of “Hobby Library” flair to this post, Nagy featured the card on the cover of the November-December 1962 issue of The Sport Hobbyist.

I wonder if a copy of that magazine was included when Nagy’s Personal Collection of Hobby Publications was auctioned off.

Frank Nagy’s Personal Collection of Hobby Publications

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I wish I had already been building the hobby library in 2005 when Frank Nagy’s personal collection of hobby publications was offered for sale.

You can see a few incredible examples in the photos of The Sport Hobbyist, The Sport Card Journal, The Trading News, Card Comments, The Trader Speaks, The Old Judge, The Sport Hobbyist and Journal, and Sports Collectors Digest among the 721 “choice early hobby pubs.”

Funny enough, Collect Auctions just sold a similarly impressive lot of vintage hobby pubs and guides in their auction that ended on April 4, 2024. Among its 366 items, it offered, I believe, three copies of Richard Egan’s Handbook to Early Card & Gum Baseball. The final price was $1626.

No matter how fancy you think your collection is, something always stops you in your tracks.