There are only a few of these cards left, that much is clear. I keep getting different answers as far as how many made it out of the tobacco factory though. These. three . sites all have the same plagiarized statement that there were only four cards ever produced. That seems highly dubious. Maybe four cards made it out of the factory before the order was given to destroy them all. If only four were ever made, it’s very, very unlikely that all of them would still be around today.
I’d like to know how many were printed in total, and how many made it into the retail market. Anyone?
Well, here’s the thing. Even back then baseball card collecting was a hobby, and it wasn’t exactly a big secret that those cards were being recalled and/or destroyed, so a savvy collector would take his and put it away, knowing that it would only appreciate. So sure, it could have happened that way. How do you think the 1954 Bowman Ted Williams got to be so pricy? Of course, there are more of those, but it’s still the same principle.
There’s no way of knowing how many were produced and how many made it out into packs of cigarettes and how many still exist. Production figures were never kept.
While the story exists as early as 1912 that Wagner refused to allow his picture to be used on the card because it endorsed smoking, other serious historians suggest that Wagner refused to allow his picture to be used for any commercial purposes. The idea that only 3-4 exist is not likely. More likely 20-50.
I doubt very seriously that “collectors” at the time had any concept of value. There was none. And I can find NO evidence from the period that the average person would have any idea that Wagner had supposedly told the company to quit producing his card. I’m sure that thousands of these cards made it out into the public’s hands at the time, but most were trashed over the years.
I agree with samclem. Baseball cards had little intrinsic value up until at least the 50s, and even into the 70s they were considered disposable items not worth any more than what you paid for them. If anyone had a Honus Wagner card, there’s a good chance it was tossed out long before it had any value as a collectible.
It seems impossible to know how many were printed in the first place, but it’s unlikely that the 57 number for extant specimens (T206 Honus Wagner Baseball Card: The Most Expensive Baseball Card Ever) is that far off. A baseball card from 1911 is unlikely to just turn up; outside of time capsules or a kid tossing one into a wall at a construction site, it seems pretty reasonable to assume every one that is still around has entered the market.