A St. Louis-area collectibles dealer plans on placing a vintage 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card up for auction this weekend, and believes it could fetch at least $1.5 million dollars from collectibles enthusiasts.
Honus Wagner cards– regardless of condition– are well-noted in the baseball card community as being one of the rarest species, and therefore are often valued at amounts well beyond any 0ther cards ever created.
Bill Goodwin, the St. Louis collectibles dealer, believes the card of the former Pittsburgh Pirates great could haul in at least $1 to $1.5 million at the termination of the auction which begins online this weekend.
The card is owned by a Houston-area businessman who has declined to reveal his identity and is believed to be one of only 200 of its type originally placed in circulation.
The American Tobacco Company sold the cards– which were only 2.5 by 1.5 inches– from 1909 to 1911, and most historians believe only around 60 of the cards still exist, and only five are in better condition than the card to be auctioned.
Frank Ceresi, owner of FC Associates, a sports collectibles appraisal firm, believes the sky is the limit for this particular Wagner card:
Because of the Wagner mystique you can never overestimate the value in the market. When you get into the real rare, cool old stuff like a Wagner card, they come up so infrequently that you never know where that price might go.
In an economy like ours where so few people have expendable income to buy any luxury– much less a 2.5 by 1.5 baseball card– it’s hard to believe this Honus Wagner card could fetch this much money.
One must remember, however, there are still plenty of people out there for whom money is no object and one of these individuals will soon be the owner of a prized piece of our national pastime’s honored and revered history.
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Kris Hughes is a Network Manager for Rant Sports. If you enjoy his takes, you can follow Kris on Twitter, check out his personal Facebook page, or stop by his personal Tumblr page.
