A rare Honus Wagner T206 baseball card auctioned for $1.2m yesterday.
The American Tobacco Company released only around 200 Honus Wagner cards as part of its T206 series in the early 1900s. Few are known to have survived (around 43 are graded).
 The Honus Wagner T206 is the world's most desirable baseball card |
Its rarity is due to Wagner threatening the manufacturers with legal action over the unlicensed use of his image.
The PSA VG-3 graded lot is among the finest examples in existence, although it failed to match the $2.1m paid for another specimen in 2013.
The present card sold at Robert Edwards Auctions in New Jersey.
The auction house commented: "This exceptional card was entirely unknown to the modern collecting world for nearly a century until it was discovered in the basement of an Oceanside, New York, home in 2008 alongside hundreds of other 1910-era tobacco cards�Ǫ
"The entire collection of cards, carefully saved for generations in the family of the original owner, was presented as part of a New York-based estate auction, where the T206 Wagner naturally 'stole the show,' realizing a then-record price of $791,000�Ǫ
"This is a particularly strong T206 Wagner that far exceeds the condition and visual appeal usually found with T206 Wagners."
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