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Another iconic T206 Honus Wagner card headed to auction at Mile High Card Company
The iconic T206 Honus Wagner card is one of the most rare and coveted cards in the hobby, yet two have surfaced this week and both are headed to auction.
Goldin announced Tuesday that the version of the 1909-11 tobacco card dubbed “The Connecticut Wagner” would headline its Spring Vintage Auction, which opens May 21.
Now a second Wagner card has surfaced and will highlight the April Catalog Auction at Mile High Card Company. The card is the sixth T206 Wagner that MHCC has auctioned over the past five years, including the “Charlie Sheen Wagner,” which sold for $3.1 million in March 2022.
The Mile High auction opens on April 7 and runs through April 26.
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The Wagner card, deemed the “holy grail” of sports cards, is one of the most rare cards in the hobby, with only about 60 examples known to exist. As MHCC points out, the card, which has been the subject of movies and books and displayed in galleries all over the world, is so famous it has its own Wikipedia page as well as a website that tracks the sale of each example at T206Resource.com.
The Mile High card is graded AUTHENTIC and marked “RESTORED” because of the hand-cut perimeter. Since that alteration precluded the card from receiving a numerical grade, a previous owner decided to improve the aesthetics by having the surface restored, removing the blemishes and repairing the orange backdrop that is so familiar to collectors. The card features a Sweet Caporal 150/25 reverse. According to PSA, only 11 Wagner cards with that back have been graded by PSA.
The Mile High card sold in a September 2023 MHCC auction for $1.968 million. MHCC CEO Brian Drent believes it could top $2 to $3 million this time around.
“History proves that owning a T206 Wagner has been a lucrative investment, and with 2024 being the first time in almost 30 years that a Wagner wasn’t up for sale, it should bring added interest to this one,” Drent said.
The Mile High Wagner sold for $63,939 in December 2003 and changed hands again in October 2021 for $1.1 million. Those were last two sales of the card before the 2023 MHCC auction, which marked the last sale of a T206 Wagner.
Other previous MHCC sales of a T206 Wagner include a PSA 3 that was sold privately in October 2020 for $3.25 million; a PSA 2 that sold in October 2019 for $1.35 million; and two PSA 1 examples, the most recent of which was the prestigious “Charlie Sheen Wagner” that netted $3.1 million in March 2022.
Prior to the 2023 sale, a SGC 3 Wagner sold for $6.6 million at REA in August 2021, and an SGC 2 sold for a record $7.5 million in a private sale at Goldin in August 2022.
The presence of the coveted Wagner card is expected to attract bidders to the MHCC April Auction and could lead to bigger sales for other vintage items.
“While it’s not a hard and fast rule that the sale of a T206 Wagner will raise the outcome across the board, it stands to reason that the added interest, increased bidding, and extensive promotion of not just the Wagner but many other key items will result in higher expectations, as it has done with the many examples we have been fortunate to offer over the past five years,” Drent said. “If I were a collector considering moving my rare, high-profile items or PSA Set Registry worthy high-grade cards, this is the auction I’d want to be in on.”
