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Dan HajduckyESPN
In August, a T206 Honus Wagner baseball card set the stratospheric record for most expensive sports card of all time when it sold for $6.606 million with Robert Edward Auctions. The mythology of the T206 Wagner is the most storied in sports-card collecting — which might explain one of the more eye-catching, head-scratching sales in recent memory.
This weekend, SCP Auctions announced that they’d finalized the sale of a T206 Honus Wagner card for $475,960, including a buyer’s premium. Until now, there hadn’t been a Wagner card sold for less than $1 million since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The catch? This Wagner card was torn in half. Wagner’s left jaw is missing, as is most of his torso.
With the card receiving only a “genuine” categorization from PSA (which isn’t uncommon for cards with major physical flaws), the card-grading giant stipulates that the Wagner is “real but nothing more.” Still, it’s worth almost half a million dollars.
It might’ve not been the most shocking deal of the weekend: Collectible marketplace Goldin confirmed the sale of a 2020 Bowman Chrome Prospects Autographs Superfractor Jasson Dominguez card (numbered 1/1) for $474,000.
The New York Yankees prospect turns 19 on Monday and has amassed a .252 career batting average in 206 at-bats between Rookie and Class A ball.