page_title: T206 Honus Wagner
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: T206 Honus Wagner / Background
caption_attribution_description: Honus Wagner T206 Portrait Cabinet Photo
context_page_description: The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card depicts the Pittsburgh Pirates' Honus Wagner, a dead-ball era baseball player who is widely considered to be one of the best players of all time. The card was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company from 1909 to 1911 as part of its T206 series. Wagner refused to allow production of his baseball card to continue, either because he did not want children to buy cigarette packs to get his card, or because he wanted more compensation from the ATC. The ATC ended production of the Wagner card and a total of only 50 to 200 cards were ever distributed to the public, as compared to the "tens or hundreds of thousands" of T206 cards, over three years in sixteen brands of cigarettes, for any other player. In 1933, the card was first listed at a price value of US$50 in Jefferson Burdick's The American Card Catalog, making it the most expensive baseball card in the world at the time.
  The most famous T206 Honus Wagner is the "Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner" card. The card's odd texture and shape led to speculation that it was altered.
context_section_description: The American Tobacco Company was formed as a result of an 1889 merger of five major cigarette manufacturers: W. Duke & Sons & Company, Allen & Ginter, Goodwin & Company, F. S. Kinney Company and William S. Kimball & Company. Because the company came to monopolize the tobacco industry, ATC did not have to conduct advertising or promotions for its products. Since baseball cards were primarily used as a sales promotion, ATC removed them from its tobacco packs, almost driving the cards into obsolescence. During the presidency of "trust-buster" Theodore Roosevelt, the ATC was subjected to legal action from the government, in hopes of shutting down the monopoly in the industry.
  Thereafter, the ATC was back in competition with other tobacco companies, so it reinserted baseball cards into cigarette packs. In 1909, the company introduced the T206 series – also known as the "white border set" – of baseball cards of 524 players into its cigarette packs. The cards were printed at seven factories in New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Two years later, the ATC was broken up into several major companies as part of the United States Supreme Court ruling in United States v. American Tobacco Company, 221 U.S. 106 (1911).
caption: Cabinet Photo c. 1902 used for the Wagner T206 image
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