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The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card depicts the Pittsburgh Pirates' Honus Wagner, known as "The Flying Dutchman,” a dead-ball era baseball player who is widely considered to be one of the best players of all time. The card was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company (ATC) from 1909 to 1911 as part of its T206 series. Wagner refused to allow production of his baseball card to continue, either because he did not want children to buy cigarette packs to get his card, or because he wanted more compensation from the ATC. The ATC ended production of the Wagner card, and a total of only 50 to 200 cards were ever distributed to the public (the exact number is unknown), as compared to the "tens or hundreds of thousands" of T206 cards, over three years in sixteen brands of cigarettes, for any other player. In 1933, the card was first listed at a price value of US$50 in Jefferson Burdick's The American Card Catalog (equivalent to $1,200 in 2023), making it the most expensive baseball card in the world at the time. The most famous T206 Honus Wagner is the "Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner" card. The card's odd texture and shape led to speculation that it was altered. The Gretzky T206 Wagner was first sold by Alan Ray to a baseball memorabilia collector named Bill Mastro, who sold the card two years later to Jim Copeland for nearly four times the price he had originally paid. Copeland's sizable transaction revitalized interest in the sports memorabilia collection market. In 1991, Copeland sold the card to ice hockey figures Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall for $451,000. Gretzky resold the card four years later to Walmart and Treat Entertainment for $500,000 for use as the top prize in a promotional contest. The next year, a Florida postal worker won the card and auctioned it at Christie's for $640,000 to collector Michael Gidwitz. In 2000, the card was sold via Robert Edward Auctions to card collector Brian Seigel for $1.27 million. In February 2007, Seigel sold the card privately to an anonymous collector for $2.35 million. Less than six months later, the card was sold to another anonymous collector for $2.8 million (equivalent to $4.11 million in 2023). In April 2011, that anonymous purchaser was revealed to be Ken Kendrick, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks. A different card, named the "Jumbo Wagner", was sold at auction again in 2016 for a record $3.12 million (equivalent to $3.96 million in 2023). These transactions have made the Wagner card, at times, the most valuable baseball card in history. However, this record was first broken when a Mike Trout 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Superfractors series rookie card with a card count of 1 sold in August 2020 for a new record of $3.93 million (equivalent to $4.63 million in 2023), and pushed further back by a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card that sold for $5.2 million (equivalent to $8.11 million in 2023) in November 2020, until another T206 Wagner sold for $6.6 million (equivalent to $7.42 million in 2023) in August 2021, returning the T206 to the most expensive sports card. That is, until August 2022, when another 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card sold increased the record to $12.6 million to become the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia of any type in history. In October 2013, Bill Mastro, CEO of Mastro Auctions (the owner of Robert Edward Auctions) pleaded guilty to mail fraud in U.S. District Court and later admitted to the court that he had trimmed the "Gretzky" Wagner card to sharply increase its value. Other T206 Wagners, both legitimate and fake, have surfaced in recent years. Some of the real cards have fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars in auctions. One particular T206 Honus Wagner owned by John Cobb and Ray Edwards has attracted media controversy over its authenticity. Background The American Tobacco Company was formed as a result of an 1889 merger of five major cigarette manufacturers: W. Duke & Sons & Company, Allen & Ginter, Goodwin & Company, F. S. Kinney Company and William S. Kimball & Company. Because the company came to monopolize the tobacco industry, ATC did not have to conduct advertising or promotions for its products. Since baseball cards were primarily used as a sales promotion, ATC removed them from its tobacco packs, almost driving the cards into obsolescence. During the presidency of "trust-buster" Theodore Roosevelt, the ATC was subjected to legal action from the government, in hopes of shutting down the monopoly in the industry. Thereafter, the ATC was back in competition with other tobacco companies, so it reinserted baseball cards into cigarette packs. In 1909, the company introduced the T206 series – also known as the "white border set" – of baseball cards of 524 players into its cigarette packs. The cards were printed at seven factories in New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Two years later, the ATC was broken up into several major companies as part of the United States Supreme Court ruling in United States v. American Tobacco Company, 221 U.S. 106 (1911). Physical attributes and production The typical card in the T206 series had a width of 1+7⁄16 inches (3.65 cm) and a height of 2+5⁄8 inches (6.67 cm). Some cards were awkwardly shaped or irregularly sized, which prompted a belief that many of the cards in the series had been altered at one point or another. In his work Inside T206: A Collector Guide to the Classic Baseball Card Set, Scot A. Reader wrote that "[i]t is not at all uncommon to find T206 examples that have been altered at some point during their near-century of existence." These discrepancies were taken advantage of by so-called "card doctors", who trimmed corners and dirty edges to improve the appearance of the card. The front of all T206 series cards, including the Wagner card, displayed a lithograph of the player created by a multi-stage printing process in which a number of colors were printed on top of each other to create a lithograph with the appropriate design. The backs of the cards featured the monochromatic colors of the 16 tobacco brands for which the cards were printed. The Wagner cards in particular advertised the Piedmont and Sweet Caporal brands of cigarettes and were produced at Factory 25 in Virginia, as indicated by the factory stamp imprinted on the back of the cards. Wagner's involvement Starting from January 1909, the ATC sought authorization from baseball players for inclusion in the T206 series, which would feature 524 major league players, 76 of whom would later be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Wagner had been at the top of his game throughout the decade, and was even considered to be the game's greatest player at the time. He had appeared on advertisements for a number of other products such as chewing gum, gunpowder, and soft drinks. Unsurprisingly, the ATC asked for Wagner's permission to have his picture on a baseball card. According to an October 12, 1912, issue of The Sporting News, Wagner di.... Discover the Rachel Seigel popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Rachel Seigel books.