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CINCINNATI (UPI) — Big news on the baseball card front. Three enthusiastic collectors believe they have found “the most valuable baseball card in existence’ — worth perhaps 000. Can a baseball card — those little pictures of ballplayers you get with bubble gum, tobacco and other products — be worth $3,000? “That’s right,” says Bob Rathgeber, 29, one of several hundred serious adult collectors around the country with part owner of the card in question. “This card has got to be worth from $2,500 to $3,000, maybe more.” The liny, one-inch by no-indy card was issued in 1910 by the Piedmont Tobacco Co, and depicts Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Famer Honus Wagner in a batting stance. Up unth now, another Honus Wagner card from the same set of Piedmont cards had been considered the most valuable of all the millions of cards in existence — worth about $1,000. “Our card appears to be a sister card to that one, says Rathgeber. “Until now, our card was never known to exist.” The tiny, one-inch by two-inch card was issued in 1910 by the Piedmont Tobacco Co. and depicts Pitts burgh Pirates Hall-of-Famer Honus Wagner in a bat ting stance. A little background informa tion is needed to explain why a Honus Wagner card is valuable. It seems that Wagner did not appreciate his name linked with tobacco and told the Piedmont people to remove his picture from the set of some 500 cards they issued in 1919. As in stamp collecting and many other hobbies, a“legend”” and the rarity of an item often make it valuable and so the 25 or so “Wagner tobacco” cards that managed to get out before Wagner complained are now worth about $1,000 each. “But our Wagner card is much more valuable because it depicts him in a new pase,” explains Rathgeber. “All the other Wagner cards were the same picture — just a straight portrait. Quis shows him chatting — a card nobody even knew existed. * It was not unusual hrom some players in the Piedmont set to be depicted on several cards in different poses, says Rath geber. Rathgeber, who has several hundred thousand cards, says he and co-owners Dick Reuss and Tom Wickman of Mansas sas, Va., tucked into the new Wagner card. “We bought a set of S00 old cards for about 40 cents a card from an antique dealer in Virginia,” he recalls. “We had no idea it was in there. Our first reaction was, ‘No, it can’t be, because no one had ever heard of such a card. “Go, we took the card to a paper restoration expert in Washington, and he authenticat e it.” The card, a color lithograph made from an apparently retouched photograph, is in “good” condition, according to Rathgeber, and is now in a safe deposit box in Washington, “we're going to take it around same baseball card collectors conventions early next year,” says Rathgeber
Newspaper Details
Naples Daily News
Naples, Florida, US
Sun, Dec 21, 1975
Page 72
Full Page
Clipped by
Martin K.
USA 15 Feb 2026
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