T206 Honus Wagner up on Ebay

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Posted By: Chris Diaz

If this has already been posted, I apologize. Wow...what a card. I have to think that the owner is shooting themselves in the foot by not going with a major auction house.

http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=220306986866&ih=0 12&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=

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Posted By: Matt

Chris - it was posted on the forum last week - the auction house they used is of decent size - they just also run their lots on eBay. And it is a beautiful card.

Hannukah is coming up if anyone is having trouble figuring out what to get me...

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Posted By: Chris Diaz

Sorry for the double post then. If a mod wants to delete this, then by all means. Wonder if any board members are going to make a run at it?

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Posted By: Tony Galovich

WOW, it's been a long time since the last authentic T-206 Wagner has been offered on Ebay

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Posted By: john

Does the grade of 3 seem correct on this card? Is it common for a card with a noticeable crease to receive a 3? I'm not educated on the standards for "official" grades. I appreciate your input. Thanks-John

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Posted By: peter ullman

yep...you can have a crease like that and be a vg 3.

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Posted By: David Goff

I have a card that has a crease across the card and SGC gave it a 4...of course it is not a Wagner!!

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Posted By: Chris

I wonder if the MSLive discount is applicable???

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Posted By: Andrew

I don't know anything about this find, does anyone have more details?

"Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Jong

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Posted By: Jerry Hrechka

My prediction - $350,000 - +/- 5%

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Posted By: peter ullman

it will definitely sell for a bit more than 350K...mabe even more than double!

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Posted By: Chris Diaz

Great looking card. I think at least $600K.

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Posted By: Doug

"I wonder if the MSLive discount is applicable???"



It does say you can save $30 by applying for an ebay mastercard!!

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Anyone who may have seen the presentation at the Net54 dinner will tell you this is a $1,000,000 plus card.

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Posted By: Wesley

$350,000 can buy you a BVG 1 these days.

This SGC 40 should sell for close to a million.

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Posted By: Tony N

I would have to guess that the Wagner would go around $900,000. REA's BVG 1 went for $317,000 in April. Even though it is a smaller auction company, the card is getting a lot of attention being on Ebay. Just my two cents.

Tony

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Posted By: Art M.

The card was sold this morning - final bid was $700,000 + premium.

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Posted By: scott brockelman

The econonmy probably took a 20-30% bite out of the price. As well as the lesser known venue. $700k plus juice was a great price on this card, given it's eye appeal.

Scott

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Posted By: barrysloate

I agree the economy was a factor, but I doubt the venue was. Anybody interested would have known about it and bid accordingly. Still a pretty strong price.

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Posted By: scott brockelman

Barry,

I think it would have done better in a larger well known auction. Perhaps the live auction format did not allow it to reach full value. According to the bid history it took less than 2 minutes to hammer the card. Mastro spent at least 10 minutes on the Wagner in their summer live auction to allow all bidders to act and react.

Still it realized about 825K with the juice.

Scott

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Posted By: Anonymous

Hey Scott- you and I are both owners of small auction houses. Are you saying that a smaller house like Phil Weiss is leaving money on the table? Because if you are, what does it say about Sloate Auctions and Brockelman and Luckey Auctions?

We all have the same pool of bidders, give or take a handful. A T206 Wagner will reach its market price every time, IMO.

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Posted By: scott brockelman

Barry,

I don't think it was the seller, perhaps just the mode. I think a 14-20 day auction may have fared better than a live auction with floor bidding lasting 1-2 minutes. I realize everyone had a chance to submit an absebtee bid, but those rarely factor in to the action.

Scott

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Posted By: peter ullman

wow...i wish i were rich...what a steal that Wags was! Congrats to the smart winner!

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Posted By: Anonymous

Has nothing to do with the auction house. It is the current state of the economy. Barry is 100% correct. Price was great considering the economy.

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Posted By: barrysloate

There are some disadvantages to a live auction, as bidders may not have enough time to reconsider and jump back in. And I agree an obscure lot, or one that is rather common, might not fare as well here.

But a Wagner is too high profile to not hit its mark. There was one bidder at 700K, another an increment below, and likely several others at a lower level. The reason the card sold for 700K is that nobody chose to go higher. I don't think the venue was a factor. If it were Mastro or anywhere else, I say it gets the same price within 5%.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

If the Wagner went cheap nothing else in that auction seems to be going cheap. What recession?

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Posted By: Anonymous

In the same auction was this lot:



http://tinyurl.com/5nree8

Which had the T205 Irving Wilhelm "suffered" card in it. A steal at that price? I bid 3150

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Posted By: Anonymous

i may be way off here but if you are looking to buy a t206 wagner......i think you are aware every time one goes up for sale? so to say a vg at $700,000 and add the 18% is cheap, not too many collectors with that kind of cash for a baseball card.

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Posted By: JimB

Barry,
I don't think it was necessarily the size of the auction house, but one that is not well-known for selling baseball cards. I think the card would have done better in one of your auctions. I think it is quite possible that potential bidders did not see this one. I could be wrong. That said, it is not a terrible price. But I imagine the economy, the format, and the auction house all could have affected the price. But it did reach close to 800k with the juice.
Jimb

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Posted By: Jodi Birkholm

Here's an interesting postulation:

Let's say you were a lesser-known dealer or the proprietor of an auction house and somebody approached you with an authentic Wagner in the hopes that you would broker the deal. Would you:

A. Sell it yourself to gain all the free publicity/advertising, or

B. Have one of the larger auction houses handle it (if it meant a substantial increase to your billfold)?

I have been juggling this question around in my mind since hearing about the Wagner that was just sold. Personally, it would be quite a difficult decision for me. There are obviously many factors at play here. Here are some:

--Any major auction house would be more than happy to sell this item at 0% to the owner. On the other hand, would they be willing to tip their hat to you, the competing dealer/auctioneer, in any publication or their own catalogue? I think they would likely find a way to make both ends happy, but...

--Is the extra money you would make worth all the free publicity you would ultimately be giving to your stronger competitor? After all, their name would likely appear first in any sort of collaborative title.

This has been plaguing me for the past few days. There are several other points I would like to add, but didn't want to take away from the main question. I'll be happy to add more later/provide further clarification later on, as this conversation deems fit.

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Posted By: barrysloate

First off, what happened to this thread? It's wider than the English Channel.

Jim, thanks for the compliment, but my guess is I would get about the same for it. And I would say every potential bidder who might participate in my auction knew about this one.

Phil Weiss is more a jack of all trades auction house that sells collectibles from every field. But they almost always have some baseball cards. Admittedly, this time around they had a much better baseball card. But that is no different from my own experience, as some of my auctions have better material than others.

I realize an advanced collector might not choose Weiss to sell a major collection of baseball cards, but this was a non-collector who lived on Long Island and took advantage of the proximity. In the end, the Wagner went for about what it would go for anywhere else. If anything hurt it, which I doubt, it was simply the live versus internet format. But the card was listed on ebay so that was covered too.

Interesting discussion, and one thing I have learned from talking with high end collectors is they do their homework and always know when and where the good stuff is being sold.

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Posted By: SC

I would have to think that most any auction would not only sell it at 0% if pushed, but would kick back the majority of the buyer's premium as well to the consignor. Consider - what is the average value of a major auction house lot? $2500-5000, depending on venue? With 18% BP and 10% Seller's Fee (I'd figure a "full retail" commission), the auction house is netting $700-1400 per lot in commission, without any discount or deal cut, which has to be rare. You can't tell me, with all the auction houses out there, that a major house would turn the card down if offered a 2-3% total commission (i.e. kicking back 15% of BP?) Or a flat fee of say $10,000-15,000? I don't see it. Especially with the added publicity and bragging rights of running a card.

Even the very rich in today's society have mostly lost 25-50%+ of their net worth in the last 11 months. Puts it in a different category who can or would afford a $1M card.

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

For the last 2 months there has been a banner ad on PSA's website for the auction. I was also sent several emails and saw an article on the find, somewhere. Word gets around when a T206 Wagner is being made available for sale. We should be having this discussion if the card sold for $200K, not 800K.