Wagner card once owned by Halper, Sheen to be sold

A T206 Honus Wagner card, once owned by noted collector Barry Halper, then purchased by actor Charlie Sheen and later the subject of a high-profile robbery, will be offered by Robert Edward Auctions in a sale next April.

In the 1990s, this T206 Wagner was displayed at the All Star Café in Times Square in New York City as part of The Charlie Sheen Collection. At that time, the card was owned by the popular actor, who allowed portions of his collection to be displayed at the flagship New York City location of the upscale, sports-themed restaurant chain.

In 1998, two All Star Café chefs and one of the managers devised a plot to steal the Wagner. The plan was to remove the card from its display case, replace it with a color copy so that no one would notice, and then sell the original.

The plan worked, at least for awhile. A color copy viewed from afar in a display looked very much like an original. The nephew of the executive chef was enlisted to sell the card for cash.

After an uncut sheet of 1934 Goudey cards also went missing from the restaurant, investigators realized that the the T206 Wagner had also been stolen and replaced by a copy. The case was solved by the FBI, the thieves were arrested, and all of the stolen cards, including the T206 Wagner, were returned to Sheen.

This Wagner card was purchased by the current owner at auction in 2001 for what was then a record auction price for a low-grade T206 Wagner ($78,000). The card carries a grade of PSA 1. Earlier this year, another PSA 1 Wagner sold for more than $317,000, which set a record for a Wagner with that grade.