A T206 Honus Wagner that was cut apart, lost most of its original card, and later rebuilt with donor material just sold for $1,337,263. It is the highest price ever paid for a CGC-certified sports card — and reading that sentence precisely matters, because it is not the same thing as a record for a Wagner, or for a card.

The card is the "Die-Cut Wagner," certified by CGC as Authentic – Restored and sold through Love of the Game Auctions. It is only the second CGC-certified sports card to cross seven figures. The first was a 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle, Type 1, graded CGC 8, at $1,253,185 in December 2022.

What Was Actually Sold

At some point in its history, Wagner's portrait was separated from the surrounding card design and its backing. What survived was essentially the player's silhouette. That fragment surfaced at a hobby shop in the mid-1970s, circulated among collectors, and picked up the nickname it carries today.

Sports commentator Keith Olbermann acquired it and held it for years before it underwent professional restoration. The restoration used period-appropriate material from the T206 set itself to reunite the surviving Wagner portrait with a matching front design and a period-correct reverse — the slab's label identifies it as a Sweet Caporal 150, Factory 25 back.

CGC's examination included forensic analysis with a Video Spectral Comparator. The company concluded the surviving Wagner material was authentic, documented the restoration, and issued the Authentic – Restored designation rather than a numerical grade.

Analysis: The designation is the product here. A numerical grade answers "how nice is it." This label answers "what is it, and what has been done to it" — a different and, for a century-old fragment, more useful question. CGC frames the distinction as disclosed restoration versus undisclosed alteration, and that framing is the company's own.

The Auction

The card opened at $400,000 and drew 24 bids. Auction Report puts the auction's close at August 8; CGC's own announcement dates the sale August 9. Either way it closed that weekend, and the gap between the two is the kind of thing worth noting rather than smoothing over.

Wagner took both of the sale's top two lots. The second-highest was a 1910 Tip Top Bread Wagner graded PSA GOOD 2, which attracted 88 bids and sold for $106,800 against a $15,000 opening. The two Wagners combined for $1,444,063, and the T206 result alone was more than twelve times the auction's second-highest lot.

Analysis: That 12x gap is the clearest signal in the results. A restored, ungraded-by-number Wagner still outsold a legitimately graded regional Wagner by an order of magnitude. Demand here attaches to the object's identity, not its condition — which is precisely why the disclosure question matters more in this corner of the market than the grade does.

Read the Record Claim Carefully

Several headlines around this sale compressed "record for a CGC-certified sports card" into something broader. It is a category record, and the category is young: CGC has been grading sports cards for a fraction of the time its competitors have, and this is only its second seven-figure result.

Analysis: None of that makes the number less real, and we are not going to tell you the price was high or low — no comparison figure we could verify appears in any source we read. What the result does establish is that a card the market can fully see the history of, restoration included, cleared $1.3 million. That is a data point about transparency, not about condition.

This blog covered the setup in CASE #0184, when CGC certified the card and put it on display, and CASE #0138 covered the Fanatics Fest context where it appeared. It ran in CGC's Graded Grail Showcase at Fanatics Fest NYC in July and was then shown at The National before heading to auction.

Verdict: the most interesting million-dollar card sale of the year, and the least interesting one to argue about. Everything that was ever done to this card is printed on the label — which is the entire point.

Confidence note: The $1,337,263 result, the 24 bids, the $400,000 opening, the August 8 auction close, the 1910 Tip Top Bread Wagner at $106,800 on 88 bids, the $1,444,063 combined total, and the more-than-12x margin over the second lot are reported by Auction Report, read in full. CGC's record framing, the second-CGC-card-over-$1M standing, the 1952 Topps Mantle Type 1 comparison ($1,253,185, December 2022), the Die-Cut history and mid-1970s hobby-shop surfacing, Keith Olbermann's ownership, the period-appropriate T206 donor material, the Video Spectral Comparator examination, the Authentic – Restored designation, the Fanatics Fest and National displays, and the August 9 sale date come from CGC's press release as published by Programming Insider, read in full. The Sweet Caporal 150 / Factory 25 back is read from CGC's own published slab image. Passages labeled Analysis are this blog's interpretation, not findings in any source. We make no claim about how this price compares to other Wagner sales; no such comparison appears in the sources.