Why the Honus Wagner card could be worth $50 million

Brian Sozzi · Executive Editor

Fri, February 13, 2026 at 5:00 AM GMT+9

Opening Bid Unfiltered is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Why is one baseball card worth more than a mansion? On this episode of Opening Bid Unfiltered, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi sits down with Josh Luber to break down the legend of the 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card. With only a few dozen known to exist and decades of mythology behind it, the card has become the ultimate symbol of sports collectibles investing. Luber explains why scarcity, story, and condition could push one copy toward a staggering $50 million valuation.

Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website for full episodes of Opening Bid Unfiltered.

This post was written by Langston Sessoms, producer for Opening Bid Unfiltered.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

What is the fascination with these Honus Wagner’s cards? Now, I I I ask you this because I have grown up seeing this one photo on a card. You know what I’m talking about? of Honus Wagner and there’s just something about this car what makes this card so valuable?

00:15 Speaker B

Yeah, yeah. Um this is like you can’t have a better story about story. I mean this card which is a it’s a tobacco card from 1909. Honus Wagner was one of the first five people inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was most people consider him to be the best player of baseball’s like first generation. But the card was very rare. Um at the time, um there weren’t a lot of lot of men made and um and just over the years it’s developed this mythology. Uh Wayne Gretzky bought uh a very at the time in 1991, he bought the most expensive Honus Wagner ever. it was like $450,000 in 1991. So we have this just mythology that has been building for a decade, excuse me, for a century. and uh and so, you know, how many exist, no one really knows. There’s only 37 that have been graded by PSA. So maybe there’s like 50 or 60 that exist. But um, yeah, I mean, if if that uh Ken Kendrick who’s the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks owns the one that Wayne Gretzky owned, which is the one that’s in in best condition. If that card ever went to market, $50 million. It’s probably

01:21 Speaker A

Oh my god. That’s awesome.

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