A baseball card featuring Hall of Fame shortstop Honus Wagner was sold for a record $7.25 million in a private sale Wednesday, according to the sports memorabilia company Goldin.
Wednesday’s sale breaks the record set in 2021, when a different T-206 Honus Wagner was sold for $6.6 million. The most expensive sale of a non-Wagner card also came last year, when a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card was sold for $5.2 million.
“I’ve been in this business for a very long time and seen a lot of incredible trading cards and pieces of memorabilia, but there is nothing on earth like a T-206 card,” Goldin Executive Chairman and founder Ken Goldin said in a statement. “The card is art, it’s history, it’s folklore. The T-206 is one of the reasons I do what I do and why serious collectors around the world love this hobby so much. To be a part of history and facilitate this record-breaking sale is an honor.”
Wagner was one of baseball’s top players at the turn of the century. He tallied 3,420 hits from 1897–1917, leading baseball in batting average eight times. Wagner was an inaugural member of the Baseball Hall of Fame when he was inducted in 1936 alongside Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson and Ty Cobb.
