Baseball cards have been a part of American culture for well over 100 years and there is maybe no card that is more recognizable than the Honus Wagner T206 card from 1909. Over the years, this card has consistently topped the charts in terms of the most valuable and the most coveted baseball card in existence. Even now, more than 115 years after its initial release the card is making headlines, this time after a restored version sold for just shy of $2 million at auction.
Card Was Sold in ‘Restored’ Condition
Typically, when individual cards are sold for millions of dollars it is usually thanks to some combination of the card being rare and also well-preserved; free from bends, tears, and a million other possible imperfections. For decades, even the most carefully preserved Honus Wagner cards were in objectively rough shape to the point where cards with whole corners missing were still able to fetch thousands of dollars at auction. At some point, the desire to own a Honus Wagner T206 superseded collector’s concern about the cards condition or grade. This is a point proven by the fact that Mile High Card Company’s record-breaking $1.98 million sale is of a Honus Wagner T206 that has not received any grade by authenticator PSA.
Instead, the refurbished card is listed as ‘Altered/Restored.’ For almost any other baseball card, the words “altered” and “restored” are a death sentence at auction. For the T206 however, a refurbished version seems to be better than no version at all, it seems. When you consider that this card is considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of all sports memorabilia, it makes a little more sense why buyers are willing to overlook restored or altered versions. After all, estimates claim that there may be as few as 50 total copies of the T206 remaining, many of which are in horrible condition.
The nearly $2 million price tag for this restored Honus Wagner card is a sum few could ever fathom spending on a baseball card, but it is far from the most expensive sale of the card. Only a few years ago, in 2022, a PSA 9 Honus Wagner T206 sold for more than $7 million. Being that there will only ever be fewer 1909 Honus Wagner cards on the market as time moves forward, one can only assume that it will be setting auction records for a long time to come.
Other Cards Net Large Sales
There is no doubting that the restored T206 was the star of the auction, but it was far from the only noteworthy sale made that day. A PSA 9 1955 Topps Sandy Koufax card sold for just shy of $225,000, an SGC 8 1951 Bowman Willie Mays rookie card sold for just shy of $80,000, and one of only 11 PSA 10 1976 Topps Nolan Ryan rookie cards sold for just under $40,000.
It’s not only older cards that are fetching insane sums of money though, as plenty of current players are seeing their cards sell for hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. Pittsburgh Pirates rookie pitcher Paul Skenes saw one of his cards sell for more (over $1 million) than he earned in salary as a professional baseball player last year.
