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The Holy Grail · Pittsburgh Sports Memories

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hi, everybody.
0:01
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Pittsburgh Sports Memories Podcast.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: My name is Tim Hannon and I'm joined by uh Steve Ward.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: Hi, Steve.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: How's it going?
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, could be better, could be worse.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: So on this episode, we're gonna talk about the holy grail of sports collectibles.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: It's the T206 Hannes Wagner baseball card.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: I like a T206.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: Why is it called T206?
0:32
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: I I hope you enlighten me.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: I will answer that question.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's like a robot or something.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: Good guess, but that's not the answer.
0:58
SPEAKER_02: So before we get rolling into this, I wanted to update everyone on something we started recently.
1:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh Steve and I really never, I don't know, set out to make a career off of doing this show.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: We just like doing it.
1:09
SPEAKER_02: Thank God, huh?
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that would have that would have not been good for our finances.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Um, but we do we do incur expenses along the way.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: And also people have asked how they can support us.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: So we started a buy me a coffee page.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: If you're not familiar with that, it's real simple.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: You can just go to our page that we have linked in the show notes.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: You can buy us a coffee for five bucks.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, we're recording this early in the morning.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: Steve could really use a coffee right now.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: I probably, I probably could.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: So so yeah, just please consider supporting us if if you feel led to do so.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: All right, baseball cards, Steve.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: Did you collect baseball cards when you were a kid?
1:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, fun, funny enough, I still have them in the basement somewhere.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: They're in like those um you ever get the binders with like the little sheets that you put them in.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: They're in there.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I think they're mainly from like 1986, 1987.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: There's a few 90s ones.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: So they're not really not really worth much of anything.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: That's the same thing I have also in my basement, is a whole bunch of baseball cards from that era.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: They call that the junk wax era because that's the era where everything was overproduced, and so yet that's why they're not really worth a lot.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Well it's kind of like like money, like if you print print too much of it because it's worthless and you're paying, you know,$300,000 for a starter home.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, nobody's figured that out.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: I I it's unfortunate because at the time, you know, I I thought that my you know, Ken Griffey Jr.
2:51
SPEAKER_02: tops rookie card or or my you know, Mark McGuire card or whatever was going to be worth all this money, and and it really isn't.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: Um, but but it was still fun.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Did you ever hear the Calvin and Hobbes joke?
3:04
SPEAKER_00: No.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so like Calvin's saving, you know, cards, and it and they're like, oh well, this will be worth millions, you know, this Mickey Mantle sold for that much.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, what if everybody, Hobbes goes, what if everybody saves their cards and it won't be worth anything?
3:20
SPEAKER_00: They said, Well, I'm counting on everybody's mothers throwing away their cards.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Because that was always the the story.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Like, I had a Mickey Manual and my mom threw it away.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: And that's why the cards from back then are worth so much, as opposed to like our era where we were we were savvy enough to hang on to them, but everybody was savvy enough to hang on to them.
3:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, hence are not worth anything.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, people put them in the spokes of their wheels, like the bike wheels to make that cool sound.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: And like kids were kids.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: They were just they were just there for fun.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: They weren't really worth anything.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: Right.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Until nostalgia and like you know, kind of like that with jewelry too.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: What do they call?
4:00
SPEAKER_00: What do they call like a proven prominenance or whatever?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Like the it has a story behind it so that makes the jewelry really worth more.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: I one thing I've learned in life, things are only worth what people are willing to pay for them.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: That's a good point.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: Like you could have the most expensive piece of whatever, and it's not gonna be worth anything if nobody wants it.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that's true.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: Um, I I I will say I had a blast collecting cards.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: I I like I said, I hung on to them just because there's so much nostalgia and fun and the trading them with my friends and going to the card shows and the card stores and the you know, the I would always get the Beckett price guides.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: Like, I just have really fond memories of collecting cards, even if it didn't make me the fortune I thought it was gonna make me.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, the the Beckett price cards were always so disappointing.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: They're like, what?
4:53
SPEAKER_00: It's like my my my John Cangielosi card's only worth like five cents.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
4:59
SPEAKER_00: I love John Cangelosi.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then you'd be like, oh, he had a really good, you know, he was like the player of the month for April.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that'll go up this month.
5:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's up to seven cents.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: So um those cards that Steve and I have aren't worth a whole bunch, but today we're gonna talk about a card that is worth a whole bunch.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: It's like we said, the T206 Hannes Wagner card.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: It is the most iconic, most famous, like I said, collectible, not just baseball card, but collectible in sports history.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: And we'll we'll get into the history of the card.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: And it really starts all the way back in 1890.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Was that the year the Pirates really stunk?
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you did an episode about that.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh, that was also the year that a new corporation is founded called the American Tobacco Company.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: And just as the name so cleverly implies, Steve, it's a company that sells tobacco.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, gotta sell something.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: And and it's not just like a startup grassroots company, it's actually a huge merger between a number of U.S.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: tobacco manufacturers.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: And the man who orchestrates all this is a guy named Gabe Duke.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: And by consolidating all of these companies into one company, he basically has a monopoly on the tobacco market.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: That seemed like a fun thing to do in that era of American history.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: That was kind of a right around when Teddy Roosevelt was coming in like a couple years later.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: So we'll we'll get into that.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Gilded Age was a blast.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you were rich and famous, I guess.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, JB JB Duke is pretty rich.
6:49
SPEAKER_02: Uh he he that company is hugely successful.
6:53
SPEAKER_02: It's even one of the original 12 members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: That must have been an easy, easy math back then with only 12 companies.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: All right, market reports.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Average by 12.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: What's the mean?
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Five dollars.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: The index went up.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: So so all of that makes JB Duke a billionaire.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Do you do you do you actually mean billionaire or billionaire in our money?
7:32
SPEAKER_02: Billionaire in our money.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: Adjusted for inflation.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: So he was like actually inflation.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: He was actually a millionaire, probably.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: Probably.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: But but billionaire by today's standards.
7:43
SPEAKER_02: Fair enough.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: Uh so Mr.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: Duke has so much money that he eventually decides to start giving some of it away.
7:50
SPEAKER_02: And one of the big benefactors of this is Trinity College, a private research university in Dorham, North Carolina.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know what this school's gonna become.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the folks at Trinity are so grateful, see, for that financial gift.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: Guess what they decide to do?
8:06
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna name their college, North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: No, they're gonna name it after JB Duke.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, that just makes you like Duke more, even, doesn't it?
8:23
SPEAKER_02: So that's that's how Duke University came to be, and decades later their football team loses a lot to Pitt in the ACC.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: So the American tobacco monopoly is reaping huge profits, but everything changes on September 6, 1901.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: Do you know what happens that day in American history, Steve?
8:42
SPEAKER_02: September 6, 1901.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: In Buffalo.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: In Buffalo.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I don't.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
8:50
SPEAKER_02: An assassin.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, suits the president.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: President William McKinley.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, McKinley's been shot.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: That's yeah, that's bad news for McKinley since he dies from those wounds a week later, but it's also bad news for J.B.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: Duke because guess who becomes president, Steve?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Teddy Roosevelt.
9:08
SPEAKER_02: And like you said before, guess what Teddy Roosevelt doesn't like?
9:11
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't like people like J.B.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Duke.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't like monopolies.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't even like the gay monopoly, which hadn't been invented yet.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: Get that community kist out of here.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: It it takes a few years, but ultimately the federal government starts pursuing antitrust action against American tobacco and ultimately forces it to break up.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden, American tobacco is faced with competition.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: Now they have to figure out a way to make their cigarettes stand out against other brands.
9:46
SPEAKER_02: So in 1909, they get their marketing guys, who are probably all new hires at this point, they get their marketing guys into a room, and someone suggests baseball cards.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: This was not a new idea by any stretch.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: Baseball cards had been packaged with cigarettes since the 1880s.
10:06
SPEAKER_02: But cards before 1909 were really just promotional pieces inserted into packs as a way to advertise.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: Typically they had like sepia or black and white photos printed on very thin stock cardboard.
10:20
SPEAKER_02: The sizes of the cards weren't uniform.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: So those older sets are usually just a couple of dozen cards of players in these kind of like stiff studio poses.
10:31
SPEAKER_02: In short, these were not anything people were really thinking about collecting.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: Well, American Tobacco changes all that when they come out with the landmark T206 set in 1909.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: And a couple of things that made this set really special.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: First of all, it's massive.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: It features 524 cards, which is pretty impressive given that there's only 16 teams in MLB in 1909 and definitely not 524 players.
10:59
SPEAKER_02: But American Tobacco features multiple variations for some players, and they even feature a bunch of minor players.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: The set is also beautiful.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: Even by today's standards, they're really beautiful cards.
11:10
SPEAKER_02: It features vivid color lithographs surrounded by bright white borders.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: The cards are printed on high quality cardstock.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: It depicts players in action.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Guys are shown pitching or swinging their bats or fielding.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but in 1909, that's pretty revolutionary.
11:30
SPEAKER_02: Steve, I I know in the notes I like had some like before and after comparisons.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking I'm looking at them now, and um one thing I just noticed was um is that Leafi Pittsburgh?
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Is it he's like kind of swinging a bat in in uh you know do you see how Pittsburgh spelled?
11:52
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
11:53
SPEAKER_02: Without is it with was that without the H?
11:55
SPEAKER_00: It's without the H, which I wow.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's pretty cool.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was Ty Cobb, second one in you have a picture.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh Ty H.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: That's Ty Cobb, yeah.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Who is very rosy cheeks.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
12:10
SPEAKER_02: I I really like the one of Christy Matthewson.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: I think that one just looks gorgeous for the time.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's a really nice like shot in time of one of the greatest pitchers ever.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, before he went to World War I.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Got his lungs all messed up.
12:25
SPEAKER_02: That's correct.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:27
SPEAKER_02: So so the set features 38 Hall of Famers, uh legends like Cy Young, Christy Matthewson, who we mentioned, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: It's really the first true modern baseball card set.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: American Tobacco also launches a nationwide distribution of these cards through their various brands of cigarettes.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: So if you look at the backs of these cards, you will see that there were 15 different brands of cigarettes on the back, and you could have different brands on the same card.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: So for example, Steve, if you had a John McGraw card, the back of it could have said Carolina Brights, or it could have said polar bear cigarettes, or it could have said oh Principe de Galice, or one of their other brands.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, that makes them even more unique, huh?
13:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:16
SPEAKER_02: So so on the back is one of the 15 brands of American Tobacco Cigarettes.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: There are 13 pirates in the set.
13:24
SPEAKER_02: Guys like Vic Willis and Deacon Philippi and Chief Wilson.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: Some Bacos have more than one card.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: So, for example, you have a Fred Clark portrait shot and you have Fred Clark hitting.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: Why did they call it the T206 set, Steve?
13:38
SPEAKER_02: You asked this before.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: Well, they didn't.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: No, at least not at the time.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: That name actually comes from a guy named Jefferson Burdick, who publishes the first ever catalog of baseball card sets 30 years later.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: And for this set, the T means it came from a tobacco company, and the two T in the 206, it was really it was just an inventory number, like the Dewey Decimal system of a library.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: So that's why to this day we call it T206.
14:06
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: In the summer of 1909, these cards are all the rage for young boys.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: There's a 1909 newspaper article where the headline reads, quote, The small boys' mania, pictures of baseball men more sought after than gold.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, that'll never change.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: That article talks about how whenever a new shipment of cigarettes comes into the stores, boys will gather around and wait for people to buy cigarettes and then beg the person who bought them for the card inside.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: So even so even back then they weren't selling like little kids' cigarettes.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, hang on to that thought.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: They weren't supposed to.
14:50
SPEAKER_02: They even cite one kid who bought 50 packs of cigarettes, so he was able to buy them.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Did his dad did his dad make him smoke them in the closet?
15:01
SPEAKER_02: He he bought 50 packs, took all the cards out, then sold the packs at a discount to people on the street.
15:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, that's enterprising.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: That is pretty enterprising.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:11
SPEAKER_02: Kids are flipping for these cards too.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: So like they flip them into the air and call weather will end face up, face down, and then the winner walks away with the card.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: So should I go with the art riny rule, let the other guy call it?
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's where he learned that rule.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: Maybe he was flipping for T206 cards.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: Not surprisingly, people aren't happy about the fact that kids are becoming obsessed with cigarettes and gambling.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: Newspapers publish editorials where they call on the government to step in and stop this madness.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it's got to be better than working 15 hours in a cannery.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: That's that's good honest work, Steve.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: Old man Frick needs needs needs more, needs a new, you know.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: Third mansion.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: Third mansion.
16:07
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: He needs to build that dam in Johnstown for his nice lake to go bright.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: That'll not nothing however bad will happen.
16:17
SPEAKER_02: No.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: Public schools call for an all-out cigarette war because they had seen so many of their students take up smoking as they were collecting these cards.
16:30
SPEAKER_02: Local police departments, to your point earlier, Steve, start cracking down on people who sell cigarettes to minors.
16:37
SPEAKER_02: They arrest people and put their picture in the paper paper to shame them.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: It's like early like internet kind of stuff going on there.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it kind of is.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: That is kind of like a sleazy thing to do.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Sell cigarettes to like nine-year-olds.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: That that's that's not cool.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: Well, they were they were getting 1909 canceled by having their picture in the paper.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: Probably rightfully so.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: Probably.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:05
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, what a mess.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: And it's all because of these darn baseball cards, Steve.
17:09
SPEAKER_02: They're ruining America's youth.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Yes, they are.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: They were fine before that, working their hours, and now they won't go to work at all because they're obsessed with once they make enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes, it's all over.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
17:23
SPEAKER_02: Get back in the coal mine where it's a nice fresh air.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: Don't smoke cigarettes.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, one of the jobs that little kids did was like open the doors because like they would have doors for the ventilation on the coal mine, because you would have ventilation shafts.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: So that was one of the jobs.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: They would run around and open and close the doors.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: I guess you would close it when it rains or whatever.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: And so like kids would like fall down them to their obviously doom.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: The 19th century was a lot of fun.
17:56
SPEAKER_02: So so yeah, lots of hand-wringing about these cards.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: But guess what, Steve?
18:00
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't stop the American Tobacco Company from continuing to print and include this set in their cigarettes.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't stop kids from wanting to collect these cards either.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: That's that sounds about right for human nature.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it does.
18:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, and then like it's especially if you're a kid and adults are upset about it, that's gonna make it even more desirable to get these cards.
18:27
SPEAKER_02: In 1909, the two best teams in baseball are the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Detroit Tigers.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: In fact, they won't meet in the World Series that season, and the two best players in baseball are Hannes Wagner of the Pirates and Ty Cobb of the Tigers, so naturally, those are the cards that everyone wants.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: A lot of lucky kids are finding Ty Cobb cards, but Hannes Wagner cards are much harder to come by.
18:51
SPEAKER_02: Why is that?
18:53
SPEAKER_02: Well, before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about Hannes Wagner.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: Johannes Peter Wagner is born in 1874, right outside of Pittsburgh in Carnegie PA.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: If you couldn't tell by the name, his parents are German immigrants.
19:09
SPEAKER_02: His mom calls him Hans, which is short for Johannes, just like my name is Timothy, but people call me Tim.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: However, at some point that gets Americanized into Hannes instead of Hans.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: And Steve, this doesn't really seem to happen until either like late in his baseball career or after his baseball career, because when you read newspaper articles from his playing days, I found that they're almost always calling him Hans Wagner instead of Hannes.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: I always thought they called him the Flying Dutchman or something.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: Well that yeah, that was his nickname, the Flying Dutchman.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: But when they're just referring to his name, like I I kept seeing Hans Wagner.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: So he drops out of school at age 12 to go work in the aforementioned coal mines.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: Fun.
19:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:58
SPEAKER_02: But when he and his brothers are not mining coal, they're playing baseball, and young Hans is pretty good at it.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: In 1897, he signs with a team called the Louisville Colonels.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: When the National League contracts the Colonels after the 1899 season, their players are absorbed into the Pirates and Wagner gets to go back to play for his hometown team.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: He quickly becomes the heart and soul of the Pirates.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: He hits the peak of his career in 1909.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: The Pirates beat Ty Cobb and the Tigers in the World Series.
20:31
SPEAKER_02: Wagner is widely held as the game's best player.
20:35
SPEAKER_02: He performs magnificently in that World Series.
20:38
SPEAKER_02: He has a 333 batting average and 6-1 bases, while Ty Cobb hits 231.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: It's just a general, all-around, not very nice person.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: That too.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, people I I I imagine that was one of those like everybody in the country was rooting for the Pirates except Detroit.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think it was kind of like good guy, bad guy, yes kind of thing.
21:03
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
21:04
SPEAKER_02: After that, his career seems to start to wane.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: The media turns off on Hannes Wagner after a subpar 1910 season, declaring him, quote, a fading star who is no longer useful to the pirates.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Easy come, easy go, I guess.
21:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:21
SPEAKER_02: So guess what he does?
21:23
SPEAKER_02: Wagner shuts them all up by winning his eighth batting title the following season.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: John McGraw calls Hannes Wagner, quote, the nearest thing to a perfect player, which is high praise coming from a guy like Don McGraw.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: He points his bony finger at you.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Hop up like a spring.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: He really was.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: He was the first five tool player, probably.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: He could hit, he could field.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: And there wasn't a lot of home runs because this was the dead ball era.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: So correct.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: And you had like the the very deep outfields, you had the you know, yeah, home runs.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: weren't really a thing, but if they would have been, I imagine he would have found a way to hit home runs, too.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: He he revolutionizes the shortstop position.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: He retires with over 3,000 hits, over 700 swollen bases, and a 328 lifetime batting average.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: He's one of the first five players elected to the Hall of Fame in 1936, along with Babe Ruth, Tykov, Christy Mathieson, and Walter Johnson.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty good company.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are really, really good players.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: Hannes Wagner was, by all objective measures, one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: Period.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's hard to say he wasn't at this point.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: I know it was a long, long time ago, and so people tend to sort of forget about him a little bit, but he really was one of the, like you said, Steve.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's not Babe Ruth or even Ty.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: Like I think people remember Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, but even like Walter Johnson, like outside I only like learned about Walter Johnson through the Ken Burns baseball series.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: And then I researched that in 1925 a World Series like Walter Johnson pitched in that.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, Matthewson too.
23:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that first those first five Hall of Famers, that that made a lot of sense.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting, like Cy Young wasn't in there.
23:17
SPEAKER_02: Like there were other guys you could have put in there, but those were the first five.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's go back to the T206 set in 1909.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: The American Tobacco Company hires Pittsburgh sports writer John Gruber to obtain Wagner's permission to use his likeness on the cards.
23:35
SPEAKER_02: And much to the surprise of Gruber and American Tobacco, Wagner not only says no, but he also threatens to take a legal action if American Tobacco proceeds.
23:45
SPEAKER_02: Now, NIL laws are murky here in Navy.
23:51
SPEAKER_02: So, yes, American Tobacco is seeking permission from these players, but not always proactively.
23:57
SPEAKER_02: In some cases, they were already already printing and distributing the cards and asking for permission literally after the fact, as is the case with Wagner.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like, well, you're already on here.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Might as well say get some paid for it, right?
24:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, and and did they, I don't even think they were offering payment.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: They just wanted written consent.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
24:19
SPEAKER_02: And did they get express written consent from all 390 players in the set, even the minor league players?
24:25
SPEAKER_02: I really doubt it.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: They got implied oral consent.
24:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, i again, like the the and i NAL laws, like some states, I think New York had a had a stronger one than some other states.
24:39
SPEAKER_02: Regardless, I mean like they're trying to do the right thing, but I just I doubt that they're really, you know, uh, like I said, I I doubt they got express written consent from all all 390 players.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you the play was, well, we'll put his picture on there and then we'll just go up there and like, well, you got your picture on here anyway.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: You might as well like get some get paid for it.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's you're get you're you're getting attention, you're growing the game, whatever.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: I I mean the players were basically cattle in those days anyway.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:08
SPEAKER_02: So it was probably just what they were used to.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: Um I I also wonder if Hannes Wagner was the only one who explicitly said no to the to the consent, or even maybe the only one who threatened to sue.
25:21
SPEAKER_02: But he was Hannes Freaking Wagner.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: So I I mean, if the backup catcher from the White Sox says you can't use my picture and I'm gonna sue you, then American Tobacco is probably like, go ahead, knock yourself out.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: But remember, the whole point of this marketing campaign is to win customers, and you aren't gonna win customers by engaging in a public legal feud with the most popular baseball player in the world, so they just decide to pull the card from production, which makes sense.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, if it's a PR move and you're gonna get bad PR, just yeah, don't even bother.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: Right.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: Right.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: So why did Hannes Wagner not want American tobacco using his picture on a baseball card?
26:00
SPEAKER_02: Well, there are two prevailing theories on this, and I want to deep dive into each one, and Steve, I want to get your thoughts too.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: So, theory number one is that Wagner is anti-tobacco and he doesn't want kids who were fans of his to get hooked on cigarettes.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: And this is a nice one.
26:16
SPEAKER_02: It sure paints Wagner in a good light.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: He really cares about kids, doesn't want them to smoke, wants them to do good in school, all that kind of stuff.
26:24
SPEAKER_02: And and remember, this is an era where tales like this get invented, like the one about the kid that was gonna die in the hospital unless Babe Ruth had a home run for him.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: That didn't that didn't happen?
26:35
SPEAKER_00: No.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I didn't know that.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: That was in a movie.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: That was, I think it was in a movie.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: And a Seinfeld episode.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, he wasn't dumb enough to promise too.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: Uh but is it possible that that you know Wagner not wanting the kids to smoke is true?
26:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's look at some facts.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: The first thing we know for sure is that Wagner did not personally object to tobacco.
27:02
SPEAKER_02: We have pictures of him smoking cigars and chewing tobacco.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: Wagner even makes this quote near the tail end of his career.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: Quote, Tobacco may shorten a man's life and interfere with his baseball career, but I guess it hasn't shortened mine a great deal.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: I have noticed that where a player starts to quit hitting, that'll shorten his career a good deal quicker than tobacco.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's interesting because I've always heard this first one that he was big, like didn't want kids to smoke, and he would buy packs of cigarettes and rip up his cards and all that, all those stories.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: Which is kind of like trending towards the babe roots hitting the home run for the kid that was dying.
27:44
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
27:45
SPEAKER_02: Like that was that was how stories got told back then.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: Remember, the media was very different back then.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: They were always on the side of the players.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: And it's like papers, too.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: It's not like yeah, it's not like instant.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: It it takes a minute for well, I mean, there's still word of mouth and stuff.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: But but tales get spun.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, books get written and early movies get made, and and just tales get spun.
28:10
SPEAKER_02: Uh Wagner's granddaughter, Leslie Blair Roberts, who is still alive and well at the time of this recording, by the way.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: And who's also the little girl on the her the statue.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: Huh.
28:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, he says, quote, I remember sitting with him in a large chair and he was always chewing tobacco.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: So no, Hannes Wagner was most definitely not anti-tobacco.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: Now, that doesn't mean he was not anti-cigarettes.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: And there is a difference, especially back then.
28:41
SPEAKER_02: So cigars and chew and pipes, these are all very popular at the time.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: But pre-World War I, cigarettes are considered kind of low class.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've heard that.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Like that's why like the fan, like the Pink Panther always smoked it with like a cigarette holder, because that was considered like high class.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: And like Turbin Capote always came out with on Carson with that big okay.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay, because just like holding your mouth was kind of like it was like, ooh, you're just like a low-class ruffian or something.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
29:16
SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: I can't think of like the equivalent to that now, like drinking bush beer, maybe.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, that's considered like uh what are you doing?
29:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're kind of well, yeah.
29:26
SPEAKER_02: I I guess I mean alcohol is alcohol, but there is a difference between like a guy and a wife beater like cracking open a can of bud versus like somebody with a glass of wine and a you know.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: So so yeah, you're right.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: I can see that.
29:40
SPEAKER_02: Uh cigarettes at the time are also considered, even then, believe it or not, a threat to public health.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: In 1900, 14 states have laws regulating the sale of cigarettes, and the Supreme Court calls them a quote noxious product.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: So, in other words, good respectable gentlemen did not smoke cigarettes, and Hannes Wagner is a good respectable gentleman.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: Also, Steve, guess who absolutely despises cigarettes?
30:08
SPEAKER_02: Pirates owner Barney Dreyfus and Pirates manager Fred Clark.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: I forgot about yeah, that's right.
30:17
SPEAKER_02: Dreyfus even famously passes on a chance to sign a young Triss Speaker because Speaker smoked, and Dreyfus thought smoking cigarettes would ruin a guy's physical conditioning.
30:27
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, that was a huge mistake not to get Triss Speaker.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: But Dreyfus wasn't wrong about cigarettes being bad for the lungs.
30:35
SPEAKER_02: So if reputable folks don't do cigarettes, and if the two guys who run the Pirates hate them, then it's presumable that Hannes Wagner is not going to be a fan either, and he certainly isn't going to want kids doing it.
30:47
SPEAKER_02: And it's absolutely true that Wagner do did love his young fans.
30:51
SPEAKER_02: He would actually hold the player gate open longer than necessary so kids could slip into the ballpark behind him for free.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: I bet Barney Dreyfus just loved that.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: How do you know how do you know that's not a tall tale?
31:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I mean, sure, I guess it could be.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: But but here's He was sitting there holding the gate open while he's ripping up his baseball cards.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, well, here, Steve, you always say first-hand accounts are are considered history, yeah.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: So so Leslie, Leslie Blair Roberts, his granddaughter who's still with us, said this about her grandfather.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: Quote, he loved children.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: He wanted to teach kids good sportsmanship.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: He didn't want kids to have to buy tobacco to get his card.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: That sounds fair.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: That sounds fair.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: Pirates, here's another first-hand account.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: Pirates teammate and Wagner's roommate, Irv Cantliner, said this in a 1914 interview, and this is 1914, so it's pretty close to this.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: Quote, Wagner's only bad habit is his love of chewing tobacco, but he detests cigarettes and he does not smoke them in any form.
31:54
SPEAKER_02: I have seen him refuse several checks of$1,000 by cigarette companies who want to use his name.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of money.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:03
SPEAKER_02: So, okay.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: So Hannes Wagner likes his chew and he likes the Stogies, but cigarettes are bad, and he wouldn't ever dare do anything to encourage a young fan to smoke, even if it costs him thousands of dollars in endorsement money.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: Right, Steve?
32:17
SPEAKER_02: Right?
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
32:19
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so there's one flaw with that theory.
32:23
SPEAKER_02: In October of 1909, right in the middle of the World Series, we have ads running in the Pittsburgh press showing Hannes Wagner endorsing a product called Murad.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: Steve, I put a picture of this in the show notes.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: What does this ad show?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't show cigars or tobacco chewing tobacco.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: It shows cigarettes.
32:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Murad or cigarettes.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: It's Hannes Wagner endorsing cigarettes, even though he's supposedly anti-smoking and anti-young fan saying him smoke promotes cigarettes.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Did they do it without his permission?
32:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: So I thought about that, and I know I said NIL laws are murky, but this would have been pretty ballsy.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: It's literally him in the ad.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: In his hometown paper.
33:05
SPEAKER_02: In his hometown paper with a direct quote about the cigarettes.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if he threatened to sue American tobacco over a baseball card, then he would have owned the Murad company by the time it's all said and done.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a hit every time, Tim.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Every time I fire one of those Murads up.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I could hit uh hit a lot of hits in the World Series.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: And and maybe maybe he rationalizes that Murad sells to adults while American Tobacco is clearly targeting kids by including baseball cards.
33:37
SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: I would just say, at the very least, Steve, that this theory that he didn't want kids to get his card by buying cigarettes, it has its share of holes.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about theory number two, which is this is all about money.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: So Hannes Wagner is not just a baseball player, he's also a very smart businessman.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: He has various business ventures.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: He owns an oil well.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: Do you know that?
34:04
SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't, but that sounds like in 1901 that's going to work out well for him or 1909 or whatever this is.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: 19 anything, I think.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: He invests in real estate, he partners in a car dealership.
34:19
SPEAKER_02: He even creates a traveling circus with his brothers.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: That's that's funny.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: As for baseball, despite playing in an era where, as we said, baseball players are essentially cattle for the rich owners, Hannes Wagner is way ahead of his time in terms of being a shrewd negotiator.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: If you remember our 1908 episode, we talked about how he holds out before that season to get more money.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: And then he essentially does the same thing again in 1909.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: He's Joey Porter Jr.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: before Joey Porter Jr.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: He had a bad hit a bad back, too.
34:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: It was all if he wouldn't have smoked those Murad cigarettes, he would have been a play.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the Murad cigarettes is what got him back.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he he what he actually did was um instead of feigning an injury, he just said, Oh, you know, I uh too much baseball.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: I I just don't want to do it anymore.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna fish and hunt and you know, I'm content just living the quiet life.
35:18
SPEAKER_02: And then when Barney George is like, I'll double your salary, he's like, I'm back.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go down to Shartier's Creek, that's probably like a block from my house at this point in time and go fishing there.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh so this is a guy who knows his value and who knows how to capitalize on it.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: So when American Tobacco is like, hey, can we go ahead and put your picture into our packs of cigarettes?
35:41
SPEAKER_02: Maybe Hannas is like, yeah, sure, how much are you going to pay me to do that?
35:45
SPEAKER_02: And maybe old Man Duke University doesn't want to get sucked into a bidding war.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: So they just pull the card.
35:52
SPEAKER_02: Right?
35:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's plausible.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: It's plausible.
35:55
SPEAKER_02: So the problem with that theory is there's very little evidence to back it up.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: John Gruber, the sports writer who American Tobacco had hired to get Wagner's consent, doesn't get a letter back from Wagner demanding more money.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: He gets a letter back that reads, quote, I don't want my picture in cigarettes, but I don't want you to lose$10, so I'm enclosing a check for that sum.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: The$10 is the amount Gruber would have made for procuring Wagner's permission.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Wow, what a classy guy.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: And$10 was probably a lot of money.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know what, yeah.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was it was a decent little amount of change.
36:31
SPEAKER_02: And we and we know this because Gruber actually never cashes the check.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: He saves it and frames it.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: That's very classy thing to do.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: That it really is.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: It it is classy, and it doesn't really sound like a guy that wants to, you know, hold American tobacco hostage for more money.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:52
SPEAKER_02: Right?
36:52
SPEAKER_02: Um, so he it seems like he just didn't want them using this image on their cards.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: I I think the fact of the matter is that we'll probably never truly know why Hannes Wagner wanted production of that card to cease.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: But what we do know is that he did in fact want that.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: And because American Tobacco complies, his T206 card suddenly becomes very difficult to find.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: Certainly that was a thing for kids who were fans of his in 1909, but even in the 1930s, when Jefferson Burdick publishes that card catalog, it lists the value of most cards at a nickel or dime, but it says the Wagner is worth an unbelievable$50.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
37:36
SPEAKER_02: About$1,300 today.
37:38
SPEAKER_02: And and that's, you know, that's$1,300 for a piece of cardboard in the Depression.
37:44
unknown: Yeah.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: That would have shocked people.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, another thing that starts to make this card valuable is the fact that T206 cards have a low survival rate in general, despite the fact that American Tobacco printed so many of them and printed them on quality cardstock.
38:00
SPEAKER_02: A publication called Inside T206 by a guy named Scott Reeder, where I got a lot of really good info for this episode, cites three good reasons why these cards are so hard to find and had such a low survival rate.
38:15
SPEAKER_02: So, number one, T206 cards are distributed as a premium rather than a primary product.
38:21
SPEAKER_02: So they're not selling packs of cards, right?
38:24
SPEAKER_02: They're selling packs of cigarettes with cards inserted.
38:27
SPEAKER_02: And sure, there were kids obsessed with these cards, but probably a lot of people bought the cigarettes solely to smoke the cigarettes.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: And through the card.
38:37
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
38:37
SPEAKER_02: And probably just threw the pack away with the card still inside.
38:41
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:44
SPEAKER_02: Uh number two, T206 cards are distributed mainly to an adult population.
38:48
SPEAKER_02: Most adults are less interested in saving novelty items than kids.
38:52
SPEAKER_02: And number three, baseball cards have little economic value at the time.
38:57
SPEAKER_02: Why would people hold on to them?
38:59
SPEAKER_02: Even the kids who are all excited about these cards eventually grow up.
39:03
SPEAKER_02: Are they saving all the toys and knickknacks from their childhood?
39:06
SPEAKER_02: Some of them obviously do, which is why we still have these cards today, but that would have been the exception rather than the role.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: They're they're hoping their mom doesn't throw them away.
39:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: And and and the reason people's moms threw their cards away is because, again, nobody thought to save them.
39:26
SPEAKER_02: Why would we save them?
39:27
SPEAKER_02: They're just like toys or they're just knick-knacks.
39:31
SPEAKER_02: It's estimated that out of the hundreds of millions of these cards that were produced by American Tobacco between 1909 and 1911, only about 1% survived to the present day.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: That makes that that scarcity right there.
39:47
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: So so so yeah, so these cards are pretty rare to begin with.
39:51
SPEAKER_02: But the Wagner card is super rare because of the fact that they had to halt production on it.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: Now, to be fair, there are other cards in this set that are rare as well.
40:02
SPEAKER_02: One of those cards that's also rare is the one of A's pitcher Eddie Planck.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: The theory there is that the printing plate for his card broke.
40:11
SPEAKER_02: So instead of fixing it, old man Duke was like, whatever, just don't print those ones.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: Screw you, Eddie.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: And if you can get your hands on a T206 Eddie Planck, you can probably sell it for six figures.
40:24
SPEAKER_02: But Eddie Planck, well being a very good pitcher who was in the Hall of Fame, wasn't Hannes Wagner.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't, yeah, as famous.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: Right.
40:32
SPEAKER_02: And then add to that the story behind the Hannes Wagner card, and it quickly becomes legendary.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: Golden founder and chairman Ken Golden describes it best.
40:41
SPEAKER_02: He says, quote, there's a reason why no Wagner card has ever sold for less than it was previously purchased for.
40:47
SPEAKER_02: The card is art, it's history, and its folklore.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: Today only about 60 Hannes Wagner T206 cards are known to exist.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: Each one would put all of your kids through college and medical school with a bunch left over.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: That's that's hard to believe that like I didn't know there were 60 of them.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: I thought there was less than that.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: I I think that's actually a lot more than I thought were out there.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: And then once again, that prominence, like you know, a story, a good story helps sell like once again, because you you're only you know, you you gotta get people interested in why am I buying this and why is this worth so much money?
41:26
SPEAKER_02: So that's a really good point, Steve, because there are it's not the rarest baseball, it's not the rarest collectible or even the rarest baseball card in the world.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: There are other baseball cards where there are less than 60, but like you said, it's the prominence factor.
41:41
SPEAKER_02: It's just this became iconic and famous.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like you said, what people are willing to pay for it.
41:46
SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.
41:48
SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, only 60 of them.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: By the way, Leslie Blair Roberts does not have one of them, but says she wishes she did.
41:56
SPEAKER_02: Uh many of the remaining Wagner cards are in less than ideal shape, being that they were originally stuffed into packs of cigarettes and that they're over a hundred years old.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: And as a result, most are graded pretty low.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: And if you're not familiar with card grading, I just want to give a quick overview of that.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, please, this is painful.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so yeah.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: So the value of cards was always determined by the condition they were in.
42:21
SPEAKER_02: That's always been the case.
42:22
SPEAKER_02: My brother had a Jerry Race wiki card when we were kids, which would be worth a fortune today, but it had a big crease down the middle, which makes it mostly worthless.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: That sucks to be your brother.
42:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: Who put the who put the crease in it?
42:41
SPEAKER_02: Uh no, I think you I think he got it like that.
42:43
SPEAKER_02: I think that's why he was able to get it because it was cheap.
42:46
SPEAKER_02: And it was just cool to have it, even though you knew it wasn't going to be worth a lot because it had the big crease in it.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: I thought I thought maybe he bought like got it when he was a kid and like like no.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: That would be painful.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: Me and Tim creaster.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: You and you and like he put it in his bicycle spokes or something.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that would that would hurt a lot more.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: So so for years when you bought these cards, and you might remember this, Steve, it was all a subjective eye test to determine the condition.
43:12
SPEAKER_02: One dealer might call a card mint condition, but someone else might look at the same card and say something else.
43:18
SPEAKER_02: And I know like whenever I would go to baseball card shows, and especially if you'd ever try to sell cards, you know.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's it it's yeah, it's just like selling a car on like uh Kelly Blue Book.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, your car is a little faded.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is, no, it's not, yes, it is, yes, it is.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: That's once again.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: What did I say at the beginning?
43:41
SPEAKER_00: It's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
43:45
SPEAKER_02: Yes, and and the buyer is always going to grade it lower than the seller because they want to pay cheaper for it.
43:52
SPEAKER_02: So in 1991, a company comes along to try to attempt to bring order to this problem.
43:58
SPEAKER_02: It's a company called Professional.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: Sports Authenticator, PSA, and they introduce a standardized grading scale.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't matter.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
44:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, well, hang on, I'll get into that.
44:09
SPEAKER_02: So you could send your card into PSA and they would grade it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.
44:15
SPEAKER_02: And then they would send it back to you in these special cases with the PSA stamp grade on them.
44:20
SPEAKER_02: And this quickly becomes the standard for sports cards all the way to today.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: If you want to sell your LeBron James rookie card and it's graded as a PSA 10, then you're going to get a lot of money for that card as opposed to a LeBron rookie that has not been graded or one that's been graded a PSA 7 or 8.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: Now, to Steve's point, PSA has been controversial in the hobby as well.
44:43
SPEAKER_02: I'm in a Facebook group of card collectors and they people just rage all the time against PSA.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: They think they're incredible.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: It's subjective.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: It's subjective.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: It's just I mean, I guess I guess if there's like a corner missing or like what constitutes a crease?
45:00
SPEAKER_00: Is it visible?
45:01
SPEAKER_00: Is it not?
45:02
SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, are the edges sharp?
45:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: Is it it it's it's also not just the condition, Steve.
45:08
SPEAKER_02: It's like it's how it was printed.
45:09
SPEAKER_02: So like a card could be in pristine condition, but if it came off the printer off-centered.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it make it worth more?
45:17
SPEAKER_00: Because it's rare.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: No.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: I think it's worth less.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, but why?
45:23
SPEAKER_00: Like, because if it was a Honus Wagner that was misprinted, it'd be worth more.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: Because it's it's just not it's not it's it's messy.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Because it's a scam, Tim.
45:35
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's a fair point because it's it's you know, and that's that's the thing with PSA.
45:41
SPEAKER_02: It's like how consistent are they with how they grade?
45:44
SPEAKER_02: What what what really constitutes, you know, uh an eight versus a nine versus a ten.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: Some people even feel like they're corrupt or dishonest.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: I I I have a quote that fits the them perfectly.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: You know what it is?
45:57
SPEAKER_00: What's that?
45:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's like your opinion, man.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: The big Lebowski.
46:07
SPEAKER_02: So, so yeah, that that has led to several card grading competitors gaining popularity in recent years, but but for the most part, PSA is still the industry standard.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: It's it's one of those things, Steve, where where it's probably better than just the chaos that existed before, where just like it's worth whatever the guy that owns it says it's worth or what condition it's in.
46:29
SPEAKER_02: So at least there's some uniformity to it.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: But if there's some objective standards that you're applying, like creases or, like you said, sharp corners, or you know, is it on center?
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Then I can see that.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: Because that you can't dispute, but right like sometimes they get into these, oh, the color isn't quite like says you.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean right, right.
46:51
SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.
46:53
SPEAKER_02: Uh and that grading is going to come into play here as we talk about some of the famous versions.
46:58
SPEAKER_02: So of those 60 known Wagner cards, let's talk about some of the more well-known specimens.
47:05
SPEAKER_02: So, first of all, um, there's the jumbo wagner.
47:09
SPEAKER_02: This one has an extra wide border at the bottom, probably because, like we said, the way it was cut.
47:14
SPEAKER_02: That one's unique because you can actually trace its history all the way back to its original owner.
47:20
SPEAKER_02: There's the half wagner.
47:22
SPEAKER_02: That is one where the card is ripped and the entire right corner of the card is missing.
47:27
SPEAKER_02: Even partially intact, that variation sold for$475,000 in 2022.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: I swear that's the one they found in the garbage.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: There was one they found in the garbage can.
47:37
SPEAKER_02: It looks like it was found in the garbage.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I if you see a picture of this thing, it's literally like almost ripped in half.
47:44
unknown: Yeah.
47:45
SPEAKER_02: And still still sold for$475k.
47:48
SPEAKER_02: There's the All-Star Cafe Charlie Sheen Wagner.
47:52
SPEAKER_02: Called that because it was once owned by actor Charlie Sheen, who allowed the card to be displayed at the All-Star Cafe in New York.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: This one's pretty beat up.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: It's graded as a PSA 1 because it's you can you can see like and it's missing like the corners and and if you look closely, there's a like a little hole in the card.
48:11
SPEAKER_02: It looks like someone stuck it into the wall with a thumbtack.
48:14
SPEAKER_02: Nice.
48:15
SPEAKER_02: Despite that, it sells in 2023 for$3.1 million.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: What?
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:23
SPEAKER_00: Just because Charlie Sheen owned it or just because it's a T206 Honnus Wagner.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: Honestly, that's the reason.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: I think it's because Charlie Sheen owned it.
48:32
SPEAKER_02: Well, that one does have an interesting history.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Ricky Vaughn.
48:36
SPEAKER_02: Well, besides just Charlie Sheen owning it, so in 1998, that card is stolen from the display case by workers at the All-Star Cafe and replaced with a copy.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: There's copies of the bonus one.
48:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, just like a fake.
48:49
SPEAKER_00: Wow, this is like the Louvre art heist all over again.
48:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, except the FBI catches these guys pretty quick and recovers the card, the real card.
48:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh years later, the guy who orchestrated that heist is pardoned by President Obama.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: There's the there's the authentic Wagner.
49:08
SPEAKER_02: This one has been graded authentic by PSA, which means it was in such bad shape that it didn't even merit a grade in that one to ten scale.
49:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh that one, if you look at the back, it's all torn up because it had been stamped to one of those.
49:23
SPEAKER_02: Steve, remember those like old sticky like photo albums?
49:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
49:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so somebody slapped it on one of those.
49:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh and so the back's all ripped up.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thinking it would preserve it.
49:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:36
SPEAKER_02: That sucks.
49:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:37
SPEAKER_02: Despite that, it still sold for$2.5 million.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: This is amazing.
49:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: There's the New York Library Wagner.
49:47
SPEAKER_02: This is one you can actually go see for yourself if you are ever fine, if you ever find yourself at the New York Public Library, just don't check out Tropic of Cancer while you're there.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, just make sure you return it.
49:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:57
SPEAKER_02: Your house agent, Agent Bookman will come find you.
50:00
SPEAKER_00: Tim, I forgot to return the when you gave it to me.
50:05
SPEAKER_02: Or is it Tropic of Capricorn?
50:10
SPEAKER_02: So those are some famous uh variations, but by far the most famous specimen is the PSA 8 Wagner.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: Now, we said most of the surviving Wagner cards are pretty beat up.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: Of the 36 that are graded by PSA, there's one five, one four, three threes, and the rest are two or lower.
50:31
SPEAKER_02: But this one is an eight.
50:34
SPEAKER_02: And that's basically pristine by standards of 100-year-old cigarette cards.
50:39
SPEAKER_02: The history of this card is that it originally it was originally owned by Hannes Wagner relatives in Florida.
50:46
SPEAKER_02: When they pass away, the card ends up with a guy who owns a card shop in New Jersey, and he sells it to a guy named Bill Mastro for$25,000 back in the 1980s.
50:57
SPEAKER_02: And Bill Mastro is an interesting guy in the hobby.
50:59
SPEAKER_02: He's a very well-known sports memorabilia dealer, but he's also very shady.
51:04
SPEAKER_02: He actually ends up in federal prison for fraud years later.
51:08
SPEAKER_02: When Mastro buys the Wagner card, it has bowed side borders.
51:13
SPEAKER_02: That's definitely not worthy of a PSA 8 rating.
51:16
SPEAKER_02: It also has a red printer's line at the top.
51:20
SPEAKER_02: By the time it makes its way to a buyer and to PSA, the card no longer has bowed borders or the red line, which means that Mastro doctored the card.
51:29
SPEAKER_02: And that's a big no-no in the baseball card world to doctor a card.
51:34
SPEAKER_02: One expert compared doctoring a card to painting over spots on the Mona Lisa.
51:40
SPEAKER_02: But Mastro is adamant, no, I didn't doctor the card.
51:43
SPEAKER_02: It always looked like that.
51:46
SPEAKER_02: In 1991, the card makes its way to Sotherby's and people are furiously bidding on it.
51:52
SPEAKER_02: The pre-sale estimate was a little over$100,000, but bidding goes up to$200,000 and then$300,000.
52:00
SPEAKER_02: Again, this is back in 1991.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:03
SPEAKER_02: It's it's kind of an odd option because they're allowing people to bid in person, but they're all are also allowing people to bid via phone.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's yeah, you you do that at an auction, so you don't like because like let's say Elon Musk or Bill Gates are there in person.
52:20
SPEAKER_00: People are going to bid it up just because they know they can afford to do it.
52:24
SPEAKER_00: So you you have like a proxy bid for you, so you don't know who's bidding on it.
52:29
SPEAKER_02: That that makes sense.
52:30
SPEAKER_02: And back then it was not easy to get everybody in person, and you can also drive up the price by having people on the phone that couldn't be there in person.
52:39
SPEAKER_02: So so at this auction, there's a couple of guys in the room who keep thinking they want it, but then this mysterious bidder on the phone keeps upping the ante.
52:47
SPEAKER_02: Finally the bidding gets to finally, finally the bidding gets to$451,000, and the guys in the room drop out.
52:57
SPEAKER_02: The card has been sold to the bidder on the phone, a gentleman by the name of Wayne Gretzky.
53:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: He actually co-purchases the card with LA King's owner Bruce McNall.
53:09
SPEAKER_02: Gretzky said, quote, my dad told me I was an idiot for paying$450,000 for a baseball card.
53:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, and then he promptly put it in like his spikes of his bicycle and ran around the block.
53:24
SPEAKER_02: Just for kicks, just because he's Wayne Gretzky.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:27
SPEAKER_02: Uh that card later ends up on a David Copperfield TV special.
53:30
SPEAKER_02: Steve, did you ever watch the David Co David Copperfield magic specials back in the day?
53:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I remember the one with the the wall, the Great Wall of China.
53:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: That that one I remember distinctly.
53:41
SPEAKER_02: And he made didn't he make the Statue of Liberty disappear?
53:44
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: He did.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: And then I think he made an audience disappear or something.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
53:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, those were always fun to watch.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: So one of them, he he rips up the T the Wayne Gretzky T206 Hannes Wagner card and then magically pieces it back together.
54:01
SPEAKER_02: King's owner, Bruce McNall, gets himself in some legal trouble, and so he and Gretzky have to sell the card.
54:06
SPEAKER_02: It's sold to Walmart.
54:09
SPEAKER_02: Oh, jeez.
54:11
SPEAKER_02: Walmart holds a contest for customers to win the card.
54:14
SPEAKER_02: What?
54:15
SPEAKER_02: They do a live drawing on Larry King, and it's won by Patricia Gibbs, a postal worker in Florida.
54:22
SPEAKER_02: Jeez.
54:22
SPEAKER_02: He auctions it in 1996 for$641,000.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: In 2000, it sells for$1.3 million.
54:30
SPEAKER_02: In 2006, it sells for$2.4 million.
54:33
SPEAKER_02: And in 2007, it sells to the current owner, Ken Kendrick, who owns the Arizona Diamondbacks, for a cool$2.8 million.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
54:43
SPEAKER_00: I bet that Walmart lady wishes she would have held it out for a while.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: Probably.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean Since she absolutely got it for free.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: She did.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, but she she also made$641,000 in 1996, which probably was pretty good for her post-worker in 1996.
55:01
SPEAKER_02: So so one footnote for this card when Bill Mastro is indicted for federal fraud and sentenced to prison in 2015.
55:08
SPEAKER_00: He says he has the real card somewhere.
55:11
SPEAKER_02: No, no, but it comes out in court that he had indeed altered the card.
55:16
SPEAKER_02: And when that happens, PSA is pretty embarrassed, and they actually offer to buy it back for the amount that Ken Kendrick, the Diamondback's owner, they offer to buy it back for the amount that he paid for it.
55:27
SPEAKER_02: But Ken Kendrick bets that this particular card being part of a scandal actually makes it more valuable.
55:34
SPEAKER_02: And I think he's probably spot on there.
55:38
SPEAKER_00: Adds to the story.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: It adds to the story.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: Just exactly like you said earlier, Steve.
55:43
SPEAKER_02: It's not so much that, oh yeah, this was doctored, so it's not worth as much.
55:47
SPEAKER_02: No, it's like now people know this was the doctored card, the Wayne Gretzky card that David Copperfield ripped up that was on Larry King drawing.
55:57
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's got a whole history.
55:59
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that probably makes it even more valuable.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a better story.
56:03
SPEAKER_02: It is a better story.
56:05
SPEAKER_02: And and Ken Kendrick, I can't even imagine what he could sell that for today.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: He maybe could like up the payroll of the diamondbacks if he sold.
56:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure that'll happen.
56:18
SPEAKER_02: Alright, so that's the story of the T206 Hannes Wagner.
56:21
SPEAKER_02: It's so much more than just a baseball card, it's really a piece of history.
56:25
SPEAKER_02: It's captivated collectors over a century and will continue to do so.
56:28
SPEAKER_02: And its legend is all rooted right here in Pittsburgh.
56:33
SPEAKER_02: Thanks everybody so much for listening.
56:35
SPEAKER_02: Please do us a favor, give us a five-star rating on whatever podcast service you're listening to us on.
56:42
SPEAKER_02: Please support us.
56:43
SPEAKER_02: Like we said earlier on the Buy Me a Coffee page.
56:46
SPEAKER_02: That's linked in the show description.
56:48
SPEAKER_02: Also check out our Facebook and Instagram feeds.
56:51
SPEAKER_02: Lots of fun Pittsburgh sports history stuff posted there daily.
56:54
SPEAKER_02: The links to those are also in the show description.
56:58
SPEAKER_02: Thanks again, and we'll catch you next time.