T206 Wagner Sales History

charlietheexterminator · #1 04-07-2017, 02:23 AM

It was late 1978 or early 1979, I was working for a fur dying & dressing company called Meisel & Peskin Fur Dressers, located in Brooklyn, NY, Union Local 122. It was my first adult job and I was the youngest guy working with a group of old-timers. This group of guys were straight out of a movie. They drank, gambled and talked sports all day. When things were slow we played poker all day. One day during poker we were talking about baseball cards and my Dispatcher, his name was Emil (Red) Weiss, an old-timer, said do I know about the Wagner card. I said sure do, that I have purchased many t206 cards from my local coin store for 25 cents each in the early 70's. Red then stood up, pulled out his wallet and slowly pulled out a Wagner. He told me his father owned a saloon back in the day and he would clean up at night and go through all the empty cigarette packs on the floor. This is how he came up with the Wagner. The first words out of my mouth were (do you want to sell it). He replied sure, for $500 it's yours. The Wagner had its share of creases even though it was protected in a thin plastic. I thought $500 was a bit too much, so the negotiation started. I was earning $200 a week take home and this was good money at that time but not enough to afford the Wagner. Red would not budge on his price, so I had to come up with the money. I wound up getting the $500 from a loan shark that worked with a different division of Meisel Peskin on the 2nd floor. Now I owned a Wagner. My girlfriend called me an idiot, but still married me in the summer of 79. Now it was late 1979 or early 1980 and I read in the daily news about an upcoming baseball card show in a Manhattan Hotel. The day of the show, I grabbed the Wagner and a buddy and headed to the show. I was thinking about selling it but had nothing to go by regarding price. When I arrived, I showed the card to the first dealer as we entered. It didn't take long, I had a crowd around me. The gentleman running the show ask if I would like to put it up for auction. I said sure as I needed the money with a child on the way. The final price was $2,200 or $2,250. I remember getting home and slapping the money down on the table and saying to my wife, (who's the idiot now). I talk about it all the time, she is tired of hearing it. A few members here know the story already. Oh well. It's Wagner #17 on t206Resourse.

Pat R · #2 04-07-2017, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlietheexterminator

It was late 1978 or early 1979, I was working for a fur dying & dressing company called Meisel & Peskin Fur Dressers, located in Brooklyn, NY, Union Local 122. It was my first adult job and I was the youngest guy working with a group of old-timers. This group of guys were straight out of a movie. They drank, gambled and talked sports all day. When things were slow we played poker all day. One day during poker we were talking about baseball cards and my Dispatcher, his name was Emil (Red) Weiss, an old-timer, said do I know about the Wagner card. I said sure do, that I have purchased many t206 cards from my local coin store for 25 cents each in the early 70's. Red then stood up, pulled out his wallet and slowly pulled out a Wagner. He told me his father owned a saloon back in the day and he would clean up at night and go through all the empty cigarette packs on the floor. This is how he came up with the Wagner. The first words out of my mouth were (do you want to sell it). He replied sure, for $500 it's yours. The Wagner had its share of creases even though it was protected in a thin plastic. I thought $500 was a bit too much, so the negotiation started. I was earning $200 a week take home and this was good money at that time but not enough to afford the Wagner. Red would not budge on his price, so I had to come up with the money. I wound up getting the $500 from a loan shark that worked with a different division of Meisel Peskin on the 2nd floor. Now I owned a Wagner. My girlfriend called me an idiot, but still married me in the summer of 79. Now it was late 1979 or early 1980 and I read in the daily news about an upcoming baseball card show in a Manhattan Hotel. The day of the show, I grabbed the Wagner and a buddy and headed to the show. I was thinking about selling it but had nothing to go by regarding price. When I arrived, I showed the card to the first dealer as we entered. It didn't take long, I had a crowd around me. The gentleman running the show ask if I would like to put it up for auction. I said sure as I needed the money with a child on the way. The final price was $2,200 or $2,250. I remember getting home and slapping the money down on the table and saying to my wife, (who's the idiot now). I talk about it all the time, she is tired of hearing it. A few members here know the story already. Oh well. It's Wagner #17 on t206Resourse.

What a cool story Chuck. The last reported sale of that Wagner was a Lelands
Auction in December of 2003.
17.jpg

Eggoman · #3 04-07-2017, 08:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pat R

What a cool story Chuck. The last reported sale of that Wagner was a Lelands
Auction in December of 2003.
Attachment 268635

+1

If you have had your cards long enough, who of us has NOT been on the receiving end of "You're an Idiot!!!" ????

Just saying...

uniship · #4 04-07-2017, 10:13 AM

outstanding story on that wagner for $500!!!

ullmandds · #5 04-07-2017, 10:19 AM

thats a whale of a story Chuck!!!! congrats!!!!!

CW · #6 04-07-2017, 11:05 AM

Great story, Chuck!

jakeinge · #7 04-07-2017, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlietheexterminator

It was late 1978 or early 1979, I was working for a fur dying & dressing company called Meisel & Peskin Fur Dressers, located in Brooklyn, NY, Union Local 122. It was my first adult job and I was the youngest guy working with a group of old-timers. This group of guys were straight out of a movie. They drank, gambled and talked sports all day. When things were slow we played poker all day. One day during poker we were talking about baseball cards and my Dispatcher, his name was Emil (Red) Weiss, an old-timer, said do I know about the Wagner card. I said sure do, that I have purchased many t206 cards from my local coin store for 25 cents each in the early 70's. Red then stood up, pulled out his wallet and slowly pulled out a Wagner. He told me his father owned a saloon back in the day and he would clean up at night and go through all the empty cigarette packs on the floor. This is how he came up with the Wagner. The first words out of my mouth were (do you want to sell it). He replied sure, for $500 it's yours. The Wagner had its share of creases even though it was protected in a thin plastic. I thought $500 was a bit too much, so the negotiation started. I was earning $200 a week take home and this was good money at that time but not enough to afford the Wagner. Red would not budge on his price, so I had to come up with the money. I wound up getting the $500 from a loan shark that worked with a different division of Meisel Peskin on the 2nd floor. Now I owned a Wagner. My girlfriend called me an idiot, but still married me in the summer of 79. Now it was late 1979 or early 1980 and I read in the daily news about an upcoming baseball card show in a Manhattan Hotel. The day of the show, I grabbed the Wagner and a buddy and headed to the show. I was thinking about selling it but had nothing to go by regarding price. When I arrived, I showed the card to the first dealer as we entered. It didn't take long, I had a crowd around me. The gentleman running the show ask if I would like to put it up for auction. I said sure as I needed the money with a child on the way. The final price was $2,200 or $2,250. I remember getting home and slapping the money down on the table and saying to my wife, (who's the idiot now). I talk about it all the time, she is tired of hearing it. A few members here know the story already. Oh well. It's Wagner #17 on t206Resourse.

Holy Mother of God.....

Joshwesley · #8 04-07-2017, 12:58 PM

Chuck!
Awesome story and a bit depressing

Very cool!

Any idea what the card sold for in 2003?

I'm sure it's a painful number.

brianp-beme · #9 04-07-2017, 06:41 PM

Great story...I like the fact that the gentleman carried the Wagner around in his wallet. That has to account for a lot of the creases.

Brian

Leon · #10 04-11-2017, 12:55 PM

There are probably earlier valuations but Burdick said value was 2 bucks a piece for Plank or Wagner, in 1943. Set #521 Baseball Series, white border, approximately 3/4 of the page down...

Leon · #11 04-18-2017, 02:26 PM

Let's give this one nudge to the top to see if anyone else has seen some early valuations or sales of Wags or Plank?

trdcrdkid · #12 04-19-2017, 01:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leon

Let's give this one nudge to the top to see if anyone else has seen some early valuations or sales of Wags or Plank?

Both the 1953 and 1960 editions of the American Card Catalog gave valuations of $50 for T206 Wagner and $10 for Plank, but Lionel Carter wrote in the November-December 1955 Sport Fan that "$10. offers for Ed Plank and $50. for Hans Wagner go begging" (see here: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=227125). In the July 1956 Sport Card Journal, Carter similarly wrote that "A good copy of Plank will net the seller $10, while offers of $50 for cards of Hans Wagner go begging." (See here: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=225029) That suggests that Burdick's prices for Plank and Wagner were already out of whack with the market by the mid-1950s.

In the February 28, 1962 issue of The Card Collector, Mike Adams mentions the "official" valuations of $10 for Plank and $50 for Wagner, but says that a Wagner had supposedly sold for $250. I suspect that this was the copy that Frank Nagy bought from Preston Orem, even though the article posted earlier in this thread says that the selling price in that deal was $100. Later in 1962, Buck Barker wrote an article for The Sport Hobbyist about the prices of T206s. He says that he remembers a listing in about 1940 of $2.50 for Wagner and $1 for Plank, which had risen to $25 and $10 by 1946, though Barker's memory may have been faulty. He mentions the rumored $250 sale of a Wagner, which he must have read about in Adams's article. I posted both of these articles in this thread: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=217680.

When the hobby became more organized in the 1970s, and conventions proliferated, sales of Wagners became more public and better documented. The September-October 1972 Sport Fan has a headline "Mastro Pays $1500 For Card", and the details are given inside in Irv Lerner's writeup of Dan Dischley's convention that summer in Hauppauge, Long Island. A guy walked into the show off the street with a Wagner that he wanted to sell for $2000. Bill Mastro really wanted it but didn't have the cash. Between that show and the Detroit show later in the summer, Mastro worked out a deal with the guy to buy the Wagner for $1500. Lerner states that the previous record price for a Wagner had been a little over two years earlier (thus in 1970), when Bill Haber paid Wirt Gammon $500 for one. I think that sale might have been written about in The Ballcard Collector, but I don't have time to look it up right now. In any case, I've posted below the cover of that issue of Sport Fan plus Lerner's article (the whole thing, since I figured people might find it interesting).

Fred McKie (whiteymet) mentioned earlier in this thread that he bought a Wagner from Mike Aronstein. That happened at the 1973 Midwest Sports Collectors Convention (the Detroit show) in July 1973, and it was extensively written up in the September-October 1973 Sport Fan. It was the first time a Wagner had ever sold at a live auction, with Fred paying $1100 for it, even though the card was not actually present in the room. Below the other article, I've posted the cover of that issue of Sport Fan (with Fred in picture #4 at the top, alongside Elwood Scharf and his wife), plus two articles by Bob Jaspersen that describe the auction for the Wagner, along with other stuff that people might find interesting.

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