A rare Honus Wagner T206 baseball card, one of the most sought-after baseball cards in history, was auctioned off this week for $1.32 million in online bidding.
The card was rated as a three condition on a scale from one to 10, with 10 the best.
Considered the 'Mona Lisa' of baseball cards, it features a youthful Wagner in his Pittsburgh Pirates uniform, his hair parted down the middle. The card is so valuable because there are only 50 to 60 of them believed to exist and and less than ten are in excellent condition.
Wagner's was among the first of hundreds of cards of major league players produced by the American Tobacco Co. and included in packages of cigarettes. Unlike other players, however, Wagner quickly demanded that his card be withdrawn. Theories vary as to why, with one being that he didn't believe American Tobacco paid him enough.
The T206 cards are from a series issued between 1909 and 1911. Here's a look at some recent sales of versions of the rare baseball card.
■ 2013 -- A collector buys a version of the card for more than $2.1 million at an online auction.
■ 2012 -- New Jersey man pays $1.2 million for a VG-3 graded card.
■ 2010 -- The School Sisters of Notre Dame auction a version of the card for $220,000. The nuns inherited their card from the brother of a deceased nun after he died. It had been in the man's possession since 1936 and was unknown to the sports memorabilia marketplace. It has a big crease in the upper right-hand corner, three of the white borders were cut off and it was also laminated.
■ 2008 -- Just over six months after it was sold for $2.35 million, an unidentified collector pays a record $2.8 million for this 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card. The previous owner paid a record $1,265,000 when he bought it in 2000. Previous owners have included hockey great Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall, former owner of the Los Angeles Kings, who paid $451,000 for it in 1991. This card however, is not without controversy. In 2013, a sports memorabilia collector admitted that he had altered the card by trimming it to make it more valuable.
■ 2008 -- A North Carolina man pays $1.62 million at a memorabilia auction in Chicago for a version of the card in excellent condition.
First Published: April 29, 2015, 1:24 p.m.
