A bit of history is required for this, though. Honus Wagner (b. 1874 - d. 1955) was a shortstop known primarily for his time as a player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he spent 17 years as a player, one year as a manager and 18 years as a coach. He is considered to be among the greatest pre-Babe Ruth era (known as the "dead ball" era) baseball players in history and was a contemporary with several famous players such as Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Cy Young.
Baseball's popularity lent itself to merchandising essentially from the start of the game. In 1909, the American Tobacco Company began printing their T206 series which included the aforementioned players and Honus Wagner. These cards were packaged in cigarette and tobacco packs and were quite popular in their time. As such, there are many known specimens of Cy Young and Ty Cobb cards. So why is the Honus Wagner card so valuable?
Though the reason has been disputed, Honus Wagner's grand-daughter has gone on record saying that though Honus was a frequent tobacco user, he didn't like the idea of children buying tobacco products to get a hold of the cards. He quickly requested that the American Tobacco Company no longer produce and package his card along with their products, leading to their scarcity. It's believed that fewer than 200 Honus Wagner T206 cards were produced in that time. With even fewer believed to exist today.
Though many people would question why a baseball card, virtually any, would go for a good quarter million dollars... It's at least somewhat understandable since, y'know, these were cards manufactured over a 100 years ago. The odds of any of them surviving are astronomically slim. So auction estimates routinely put a vintage T206 Honus Wagner card in the $100,000+ range, if not higher.
But there is one that has gone for much, much more. It's a case of the card being so famous that it inflates its value rapidly. The Gretzky T206 card first became famous in 1985 when it sold for $25,000. After a very short time, the card was sold for $30,000 where it sat in a massive collection for a couple years. In 1987, it was sold again for $110,000. In 1991, Wayne Gretzky helped purchase the card for an astounding $451,000. After being sold to Walmart to be used in a massive contest they were doing; the card ended up on the market again in 2000 when it sold for $1,265,000. The last flurry of auctions over the card saw the value jump to $2,350,000 in February, 2007, then rising to $2,800,000 in September of that year.
Ever since its inception, it was an unusually valuable card. In one of the earliest baseball card collecting texts, released in the 1930s, the card's value was estimated to be $50... Which made it the most expensive baseball card in the world. Indeed, to this day, very few items in baseball... Even in all of sports... Can come close to matching what the T206 Honus Wagner card fetches on a regular basis.
