Honus Wagner Card Could Hit $1 Million

July 5 -- His contract with the Louisville Nationals in the late 1800s was worth $2,000, but Honus Wagner’s baseball card could fetch 500 times that at auction.

Bidding on the famous T206 Wagner card begins today over the Internet on eBay, which is working with Robert Edward Auctions on the 10-day sale. The card was sold for $640,500 to well-known collector Michael Gidwitz in 1996 and could earn much more this time around.

“I’d be surprised if it didn’t bring more than $1 million,” Rob Lifson, director of Robert Edward Auctions, said of the Wagner card, a specimen he calls the “Mona Lisa of all trading cards” for its international recognition.

Once just a youngster’s hobby, baseball-card collecting has become an expensive business in recent years. Since 1997, 23 cards have sold for prices ranging from $61,000 to nearly $224,000. The 1996 sale of the Wagner card, the exact same one that will be auctioned on eBay, was the most expensive ever.

Card’s Legend Gives It Value

A charter member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, Wagner is considered one of baseball’s greatest all-around players. He batted at least .300 in 17 straight seasons and led the league in stolen bases six times. After an 18-year major league career, he coached the Pittsburgh Pirates for 20 years. (See slide show on Hall of Fame inductees.)

But the value of his card is due less to Wagner’s stats as it is to the combination of the card’s scarcity, mint condition and legend, according to T.S. O’Connell, managing editor of the Sports Collectors Digest.

From 1909 until 1911, the American Tobacco Company issued its landmark T206 baseball card set, a collection of 523 different cards that featured nearly every baseball player of that time, including Wagner.

The cards were distributed with packs of cigarettes as a marketing ploy to sell tobacco. Legend has it that Wagner demanded the company to stop making his card because he didn’t want to encourage kids to smoke. Some dispute that theory, saying that Wagner wanted more money from the company to cooperate with the card business.