Highest-Graded PSA T206 Set up for Auction by Heritage

Posted on August 27, 2018 by Pre-War Cards

One high-grade T206 card is pretty impressive. But how about 500+ of them?

The largest known collection of high-grade PSA T206 cards is up for auction by Heritage. The impressive collection contains a gaggle of PSA 7s, 8s, 9s, and even perfect 10s. The collection has an incredible GPA weighted average of 8.2, making it the top T206 collection on the PSA registry.

The cards, wisely, are being offered individually. There is no doubt that they would attract some crazy bids as an entire collection but they likely will fetch more money individually as more bidders can get in on the action.

That would be true of most any set but is especially true in something like T206 because of the high number of collectors pursuing specific players, teams, and backs. And while many collectors could afford a purchase of, say, $1,000, there aren’t many that could handle the $2-3 million or whatever that would probably be needed to take the entire thing.

Cards that have already surpassed $50,000 in bidding include:

Eddie Plank (PSA 7)
Sherry Magie Error (PSA 8)
Ty Cobb green background (PSA 8)
Ty Cobb red background (PSA 8)
Walter Johnson portrait (PSA 9)
Christy Mathewson white cap (PSA 9)
Cy Young bare hand (PSA 9)
John McGraw finger in air (PSA 10)

The most expensive cards here are the Plank shortprint and the Magie error card. Plank is already up to $280,000 in the bidding and Magie is at $140,000. The Wagner and Doyle print correction are not found but Plank and Magie are two of the Big Four and make this already impressive near set even more noteworthy.

So what does this mean for the industry? Well, in terms of publicity, it draws even more attention to T206 as this is certainly big hobby news that will be noticed by even modern collectors. As far as the T206 market itself, though, I’m not sure much changes. The set remains wildly popular and, barring some cards that might sell for crazy amounts, I’m not sure much comes out of this other than someone is going to make a lot of money. This, perhaps, establishes some new benchmarks for high-grade T206s but that’s really about it. I doubt the release of these into the marketplace affects things very much one way or the other.

If you’re a high-grade collector, though, you’re almost certainly very happy about the news. It will make finding high-grade T206s a little easier as the cards are not only up for auction now but will be dispersed elsewhere in the hobby when they weren’t previously being sold.