Pittsburgh Pirates

1909 Honus Wagner baseball card could set new record, sell for more than $5 million

LOS ANGELES — One of the most recognizable and coveted sports trading cards of all time, the 1909 T206 Honus Wagner tobacco baseball card, could set a new record when it sells at auction.

According to a news release, fewer than 60 of the cards are known to exist. The one going up for auction is expected to sell for more than $5 million. That would make it the highest-priced sports card ever sold at auction.

The current record is held by a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA MINT 9 sold at $5.2 million in January.

The news release said the Wagner card is part of one of the most famous baseball card sets ever made. The T206 White Border series was issued between 1909 and 1911 by the American Tobacco Company. Legend has it the Pirates Hall of Famer fought to end production of his card because he did not want children buying packs of cigarettes just to get it.

Bidding begins at $1 million.

In 2020, a Wagner card sold for a then-record of $1.4 million.

>>>RELATED: Honus Wagner card sells for more than $1.4 million

Wagner played 21 seasons from 1897 to 1917, almost all of them with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He won eight batting titles over his career, the last one in 1911. It’s a National League record that has not been broken to this day.

He was born in 1874 in what is now Carnegie.