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The auction of the Honus Wagner baseball card — seen on this season of Netflix’s “King of Collectibles” — closes Feb. 21.
The King of Collectibles has been collecting since his first trip to Fenway Park at age 12.
“I’m 60. In my 48 years of collecting, I have never known of or seen — outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — a Honus Wagner card like this. Until now,” Ken Goldin, star of Netflix’s “King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch,” tells me in a recent phone interview.
I’m no baseball card collector. But as a fan of the hit series — which centers on Goldin’s New Jersey-based collectible empire, their treasure-hunting and auctions — I almost spit out my drink when a Wagner with Massachusetts ties was featured this season.
We’ve learned previously in the series the unbelievable value one little piece of cardboard with the name “Honus Wagner” on it can hold. (In season 2, Goldin offers $40 million to buy a Wagner from one owner, and is denied.)
This card, featured in season 3 of the show, is a rare T206 Wagner. A T206 is a tobacco card set issued from 1909 to 1911 in cigarette and loose tobacco packs.
It was first pulled from a pack of Sweet Caporal Cigarettes in the early 1900s by a New York kid, Morton Bernstein. Bernstein would grow up to own, with his father, a sterling silver manufacturing plant in Taunton, aka “Silver City.”
“The amazing thing about the card is — unlike any other type of asset — there’s never been a recorded instance where somebody bought a T206 Wagner in any grade, and then, in the future, sold for less than what they paid,” Goldin says.
Some 116 years after lil’ Morton pulled a Wagner from his pack, his grandsons Dennis and Douglas Shields are finally ready to sell.
The cards have a near mythic status because so few were made, Goldin explains. So when he got the call last year that one existed, he was skeptical.
Before they’re sold, cards are graded on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best. What made Goldin’s eyes pop: this card was ungraded. It had never been sold. It’s been kept under glass, by the same family, for 116 years.
“Typically, when people say they have a Wagner, I say ‘Send me a picture.’ If it’s not graded, it’s fake,” Goldin tells me.
When the family sent Goldin a photo, “I magnified it on my iPhone. I’m looking (at) the card, like, “Holy sh—,” Goldin tells me with a laugh.
“There’s a resource online where every single T206 Wagner that people know exists is listed. This card was not on there,” he says. “Which meant nobody knew about this card.”
Season 3 ends before we learn what happens. Because the auction is happening now.
Goldin’s Wagner auction closes Feb. 21. The current bid, per the website as of this writing: $3.9 million. A Goldin rep explains that when you factor in the “Buyer’s Premium” price — a 22 percent fee, which you can see in smaller print under the “current bid” price — the actual price it would sell for if the auction closed now is $4,758,000.
What’s a T206? Why is this card so rare?
“T206 was different than every other set because it was put out [through various brands] by the American Tobacco Company. It was the first major set issue across the United States. To many people, it’s the most important trading card set ever issued,” Goldin explains.
“But as people were putting sets together, they were realizing: Where the hell are the Wagners? There were no Wagners. After research, it was found that before the cards really got into circulation, Wagner complained.
“We think he didn’t like the fact that the cards were distributed inside packs of cigarettes. He didn’t want 12-year-old boys buying packs of cigarettes to get his cards.”
Lil’ Morton Bernstein got his hands on one, anyway.
Family roots
“My grandfather is from a family back East,” Dennis Shields, 77, tells me from his job at a Harley Davidson dealership “out in the high desert, in California on the way to Vegas.”
“My great-grandfather started a business in the early 1800s in New York. It morphed into an import/export business. In the early 1970s, they purchased a silver sterling flatware manufacturing plant in Taunton, Massachusetts, called F.B. Rogers Brothers.”
Bernstein moved to California to open a West Coast Division of National Silver Company, and decorated his offices with famed sports cards, including the Wagner.
In the late ‘60s, when they sold the family business, “my brother-in-law, Michael, pointed out that some of these cards were valuable. One was the Honus.”
At the time, the card was worth around $1500, Shields estimates.
This year, finally, the former Taunton silver plant owner’s family decided “it would be nice if we let someone else manage it,” Shields says. “I’ll be 78 this year. None of us know when we’re going to cash our chips in.”
The family also consigned dozens of other cards to Goldin as part of the same auction lot.
Filming for Netflix
After Goldin’s “holy sh—“ moment, he tells me, “My first thought was, we gotta get this card out of your house. We gotta get this in a vault until it’s time to film.”
Goldin didn’t see the card in person until he walked into the family home on filming day, last June.
He says what we see happen on the episode was in real time: We see Goldin clock the Wagner and break into a grin.
“This is just ridiculous,” he says, bursting into a laugh. “I thought I knew of every single legitimate T206 Honus Wagner,” he says, then stutters with excitement. “Look, you guys have made my year.”
After looking at Grandpa Morton’s collection, including Ty Cobb, Goldin says it’s “the biggest discovery in the hobby in the past 50 years.”
Dennis explains they held onto the card for “sentimental” reasons. “We held on to it just ‘cause we loved him.”
When he estimates the card will be graded a PSA 1, the family seems gleefully surprised. Goldin tells the camera that many Wagners can’t even register on the scale with a numerical grade. He tells the family the card could go for $6+ million.
“People dream of finding hidden treasure,” he tells the family. “This is going to be an inspiration to anybody who collects anything.”
Goldin’s New England ties
Everybody’s got one. Goldin’s got a few.
The New Jersey native’s daughter, Lindsey, went to school in Boston at Emerson.
Season 3 episode 1 of his Netflix show kicks off in Boston, with Goldin visiting Boston’s Chef Nick DiGiovanni.
But his real connection goes back to childhood. Boston is where the King of Collectibles was introduced to his lifelong passion.
“I used to go to tennis camp in Boston and what really got me into baseball — talk about a fluke — when I was about 12, the camp took us to Fenway for a Red Sox game. On that day, Carl Yastrzemski hit his 400th career home run.”
Lil’ Ken caught baseball fever. (Yes, he’s still got the Fenway ticket stub.)
“Then one day, I went to a flea market. A guy wanted $100 for a trunk full of cards. I took the $70 out of my dad’s hand and said, in my squeaky, prepubescent voice: ’Will you take $70?’ The guy said yes, and my parents didn’t see me for six months because I was hidden in my basement sorting cards. I sold the cards I didn’t want. From that day on, I was running a business.”
Goldin founded Goldin in 2012, largely to consign and auction sports memorabilia. Today, you can find anything from movie memorabilia to Logan Paul’s Pikachu Illustrator Pokémon card. (Also featured in season 3. Current bid with premium: $6.3 million.)
Around 2020, Goldin was approached by Connor Schell (co-creator of ESPN’s “30 for 30,” executive producer of “Celtics City.”)
“He told me he’d been following my career and thought I’d be fascinating to tens of millions of people. I said, “If you think I’ll be fascinating to tens of millions of people, I will let you make a show — I’m not fascinating to my wife,” Goldin tells me with a laugh.
The first season of “King of Collectibles” was nominated for a Daytime Emmy.
“I hope we get a quick renewal. I’d like to go to season four,” Goldin tells me.
Boston collectibles
I asked Goldin about his own collection.
“My personal most prized possession is actually from somebody who started his career on the Boston Red Sox: Babe Ruth. I have a 1927 game-used bat. That’s one of my favorite items.
“I also have the bat David Ortiz used when he passed Mel Ott on home runs. It’s a game-used pink Mother’s Day bat. So it’s very cool.”
He’s also consigned plenty of New England items, including Tom Brady’s childhood sports card collection, items from the 2004 Boston Red Sox curse-breaking World Series win. He says he had both Larry Bird and Ted Williams under contract for autographs and personal signings in the ‘90s.
“I met Ted in ’92. He didn’t talk much. One thing he talked about was his signature. He loved his signature, because he felt ‘When I sign a baseball, I want everyone to instantly know who it is. I work on my signature to make sure it really looks beautiful.’ And he does have a distinguished signature.”
There’s plenty more Boston-ablia up for auction now on Goldin, including:
And you could be the first to bid on a Feb. 9, 1963, Bill Russell Signed, Personally Owned Original Artwork by Boston Globe Illustrator Phil Bissell.
Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
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