Auctions
Iconic T206 Honus Wagner card traced to original cigarette pack sells for $5.1M at Goldin
A T206 Honus Wagner card that had remained in the same family for more than a century and was traded to its original cigarette pack in the early 1900s sold for $5,124,000 in Goldin's 2026 Winter Vintage Elite Auction.
The card, graded PSA 1, was traced to Morton Bernstein, who collected and preserved trading cards in the early 1900s and kept them as part of a framed collection. Following his passing, his grandsons, Dennis and Douglas Shields, preserved the collection, maintaining the Wagner card as a family heirloom until it was consigned to Goldin. The card's discovery was first announced by Goldin in December 2025 and is detailed in Season 3 of Netflix’s “King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch.”
“I’ve never been able to trace a Wagner that has stayed in only one family since the day the card came out,” Goldin founder and CEO Ken Goldin said. “The Shields’ care and respect for their grandfather’s collection—carefully looked after behind closed doors for 116 years—has preserved one of the hobby’s true grails, and the importance of this cannot be overstated.”
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Only about 60 examples of the iconic card is known to exist. PSA has graded only 27 Wagner examples, with the highest grade a 7. PSA has graded five copies a 1, five as a 1.5, and 11 as Authentic.
The sale is the third-highest sell of a T206 Wagner card. The historic card set a then-sports card record when an SGC 3 example sold at REA in 2021 for $6.6 million. An SGC 2 example broke that record in 2022 when it sold for $7.25 at Goldin. Three more examples sold for more than $3 million, with all three sold by Goldin.
“We are honored that the Shields family chose us to represent this historic card that has been in their family for 116 years,” Goldin said after the auction. “Tonight, the Shields shared with me that they are thrilled with the sale—and we hope the new owner treasures it as much as they did. The T206 Honus Wagner remains the Mona Lisa of sports cards.”
