Wagner Card Buyer Goes Public
L O S A N G E L E S, July 18, 2000 -- Brian Seigel is the proud owner of a HonusWagner baseball card that cost him a record $1.265 million, andhe’d love to share it with fans and collectors around the country.
He’s got some ideas along those lines, but right now, the40-year-old Californian is just ecstatic to have what he called theHoly Grail, the Mona Lisa of baseball cards in his possession.
“It’s a dream come true,” Seigel said by telephone today, three days after winning an online auction for the card depicting thePittsburgh Pirates’ Hall of Fame shortstop. “There is no othercard like this.”
Widely regarded as one of the rarest and most coveted amongcollectors, the card is the finest known specimen of about 50Wagner cards known to exist from the 1909 set issued by theAmerican Tobacco Company.
Wagner Card Buyer Ecstatic
Seigel’s identity was not made public Saturday when RobertLifson, president of Robert Edward Auctions in Watchung, N.J.,confirmed the sale price — $1.1 million plus a 15 percentcommission, the highest ever paid for a baseball card.
“That was part of the fun of the whole thing,” Seigel said ofhis decision to identify himself at a news conference at AnaheimStadium. “I don’t want to go into hibernation, I want to promotethe hobby.
“I wouldn’t call anything a bargain for over $1 million. Thefact is, this is the value of the card. It just sold at auction,everybody knew about it. The value of something is how much peopleare willing to pay for it.”
Bidding on the card on eBay began at $500,000 on July 5, and 13bids were made. The card, won in an auction for $640,500 byChicago-based collector Michael Gidwitz in 1996, broke its ownrecord for a sports card.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, this one has been graded an 8,” Seigelsaid. “The next highest Honus Wagner card has been graded a 4.That sold late last year for $325,000. That’s the second-mostvaluable card in the whole hobby. This is the best-known of a veryrare card, it’s in near mint-to-mint condition.”
Considers Himself ‘Comfortable’
A 1983 graduate of Cal State Fullerton, Seigel took $1,000 andstarted a company the following year that financed equipment forsmall businesses. It was a huge success, went public in 1995 andwas sold to the American Express Co. last year for $61 million.
“I’m not Bill Gates or anything like that, but I’mcomfortable,” said Seigel, who identified himself as “marriedwith a daughter almost 14 as well as 3-year-old boy-girl twins anda baseball card.”
Seigel specifically collects early 20th century cards, includingthe T206 set of Wagner, Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and TrisSpeaker, among others.
“They come in different poses, there’s about 75 Hall of Famersin that set and I have about 67, 68,” Seigel said.
He said he began thinking about the Wagner card when it sold for$461,000 in 1991 to former hockey star Wayne Gretzky and BruceMcNall, then owner of the Los Angeles Kings. It was around thattime that his business was really becoming successful.
“This is the Mona Lisa of our hobby, most people don’t get tosee it,” Seigel said. “What I’m thinking of, and this is just a thought, is to have a traveling company to tour big-leagueballparks to put this card on display. If I took this to my safetydeposit box, nobody would ever see it. I don’t want that to happen,it’s better for the hobby if people get to see it.
“This guy started playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates 100 yearsago, in 1900. Wouldn’t it be neat if people could go to DodgerStadium and see the card? To me, that would be awesome. How’s thatgoing to work? I don’t know. I could see the idea of distributingreplicas for free at a game and allowing people to go to a booth,see the real thing. That’s what I’ve been envisioning.”