Honus Wagner Card

After selling for $6.6 million in an auction on Sunday night, the historic Honus Wagner T206 baseball card has reclaimed its title as the most expensive sports trading card ever sold.

Wagner played from 1897 to 1917 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 alongside Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. Companies like the American Tobacco Company were mass-producing baseball cards and inserting them into cigarette packs at the time (ATC). The T206 Wagner card was made by this business.

While the vast majority of ATC cards were mass-made in large quantities — over 4,200 ATC Cobb cards exist now, for example – Wagner cards were produced in small quantities. The Wagner T206 is extremely rare, according to Darren Rovell of the Action Network, with only three SGC graded and four PSA graded of equivalent or greater quality, which is why it was able to beat the record despite an otherwise humdrum grade of three out of ten.

Price: $6.6 million