CHESTER, N.J. — It has been a home run of a year for record-setting baseball cards but Honus Wagner’s 1909-1911 American Tobacco Co.,-issued T206 is now back on top after Robert Edward Auctions sold one on August 16 for $6,606,296. It smashed the previous record, which had been set at $5.2 million in January 2021 for a Mickey Mantle rookie card, itself besting the $3.93 record realized for a Mike Trout card in August 2020.

The record-setting Honus Wagner card had been discovered in Long Island in 1973 and was sold for $1,100 in Detroit around that time, when it was acquired by New Jersey collector, Fred McKie. In 1975, McKie sold his collection to local collector, Barry Halper, who went on to form one of the most well-known baseball collections that included two Honus Wagner cards. It went from Halper to a Texas collector, who let it languish for more than 30 years as the centerpiece of an ungraded T206 set. In 2012, it was graded a VG 3 by SGC and sold at auction for $1.23 million before it was sold privately.

Vibrant colors, bright orange background and a crisp bold portrait are all the elements most sought-after by collectors and this card has it. It is one of just four similarly SGC graded examples and only four cards are known with higher grades.

Edward’s auction went online on July 23, when the card had a listed reserve price of $1 million. Both the seller and buyer have, for now, retained their anonymity.