One of the finest T206 Honus Wagner baseball cards is expected to sell for more than $5m when it comes to auction on October 1.
It's known as the "Jumbo" Wagner, in reference to the size of its margins, and is one of three Wagner cards graded PSA 5 and above.
 The 'Jumbo' Wagner is named for the size of its margins |
It last sold for $2.1m in 2013, a record for a trading card at auction.
The Honus Wagner card is the rarest in the T206 series. Only around 200 were released before Wagner threatened the printers with legal action.
Around 43 have survived to the present day.
Goldin Auctions, which is facilitating the sale, comments: "Even the uninitiated will speak in awe about the Mona Lisa, the barely literate recognize that the Brasher Doubloon was once intended to be spent, and the most tone-deaf soul on earth understands the meaning of the Stradivarius.
"It's in this vein of subliminal knowledge that virtually everyone in America - from soccer mom to sophisticate, from pedestrian to patrician - instantly equates the name 'Honus Wagner' with the concept of the baseball card hobby's summum bonum - 'highest good.'"
The finest example of a T206 Honus Wagner is the PSA 8 graded specimen that once belonged to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.
That card sold for $2.8m, the existing record for any trading card, in 2011.
For this reason we would be surprised if the present card offered in the sale exceeded $3m - although its extreme rarity is likely to fire up bidders.
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