Family with Marin connections unveils ‘Holy Grail’ of baseball cards

By Steve Hermanos

IJ correspondent

Last Monday, a family with Marin County and Los Angeles connections revealed that they are the owners of an extremely rare Honus Wagner baseball card from the 1909-11 T206 set. It is the first time in the 21st century that a T206 Honus Wagner card has been added to the list of approximately 50 previously known to exist. The baseball card is worth millions of dollars.

The Honus Wagner card — owned by Douglas Shields and Dennis Shields — was unveiled on the Squawk Box show on CNBC, setting off fireworks throughout the world of collectibles. The card will be sold at auction in 2026.

“It’s exciting and joyous,” Bobby Michener, longtime owner of Diamond Sports Cards in San Rafael, commented about the newly-unveiled Honus Wagner. “People in the hobby always wonder if there are any more in hiding. Our wishes came true today. It’s the Holy Grail.”

Michener is considering hosting a party at his shop to celebrate the revelation of the card and its Marin County affiliation. He estimates the card is worth $5 million.

The Honus Wagner T206 (its set number, T206, was designated in the 1930s by Jefferson Burdick, who ensconced his own Honus Wagner T206 in New York’s Metropolitan Museum) is a perfect storm of collecting factors: it’s extremely rare, part of a beautiful set which has been widely collected for 116 years, Honus Wagner is one of the all-time greatest baseball players and among the elite first class inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and it’s an eye-catching card – with the composition of an Early Renaissance portrait.

Plus, it’s got lore. While there are four different Ty Cobb poses in the 524-card set, and multiples of other popular players, there’s only the single stiff portrait of Wagner with the mustard-colored background. Collectors chuckle at the lack of an ‘h’ in the Pittsburg across his chest, but Pittsburgh city officials had chopped off the ‘h,’ replacing it a few years later.

When Honus Wagner first found out about the card, he asked the tobacco company to cease using his image. He didn’t want his picture to attract kids to cigarettes. He was ahead of his time regarding tobacco and kids, though he smoked cigars and chewed the leaf. (After he died, a printer’s proof of the card was discovered amongst Honus Wagner’s possessions.)

“I’m shocked,” remarked Cris Taylor, about the newly-revealed Wagner card. Taylor, a Federal probation officer who lives in Corte Madera, says that at one point he owned 260 T206 cards. Now his collection is down to 100 (including one with a mark on the back indicating it was once owned by writer F. Scott Fitzgerald). “I’m always surprised when there’s a new-to-the-hobby find like this. It’s amazing.” He estimates the card is
worth between $5 – $7 million.

But not everyone is rejoicing.

“I’m sad,” commented Ross resident Mathew Salter, a bank executive, father of two, Ross City Council member, Little League coach, and lifelong Dodgers fan. The card has been owned by his family for almost a hundred years, originally acquired by his great-grandfather. “It was something special to our family. I’ve seen it countless times.”

Salter, who grew up in Los Angeles, said that his family helped get Dodger Stadium built in the 1960s, and enjoyed season tickets for half a century. But his uncles are the heirs to the Honus Wagner card, and they recently decided it was time to sell it.

The family didn’t know they owned the card until the “late ’80s or early ’90s,” Salter recounted. While poking around a warehouse that contained storage, some family members found four framed groupings of cigarette cards, each group tastefully arrayed behind glass, in a cherry wood frame, in a field of green linen matting — each card highlighted by a thin red, leather border: birds, Brooklyn Dodgers, a group of random
cards, and Pittsburgh Pirates.

The baseball-loving family members were thunderstruck at spotting the T206 Honus Wagner in the frame. They shared the news with close family members. To avoid unwanted attention, they agreed to keep it secret. The cards were originally acquired by Salter’s great-grandfather, Morton
Bernstein, a baseball fan and successful businessman. They were framed, it seems, sometime around World War II, and hung in Bernstein’s office.

Regarding the sale of the Honus Wagner card, Salter noted that no one in the family is desperate for money, and that his father has an impressive card collection of his own. The reason for selling the T206 Wagner seemed to be that his uncles, both in their 70s, don’t have children who are big baseball fans. Salter noted, “It’s an heirloom that’s now gone.”

Salter said that Douglas Shields hung the display of Pirates cards, including Honus Wagner, in his home near Tomales Bay. The wide frame of Pittsburgh Pirates cards made the road trip up and down California multiple times, as the Shields brothers shared the pleasure of a family treasure.

The Shields family commissioned Ken Goldin of Goldin Auctions to sell the card, and it (along with the Shields brothers and Mr. Salter’s father) is featured in episode 3 of the Netflix show “King of Collectibles,” currently in its third season. The auction date has not yet been set.

The amount of wear on a card is a key factor in its value. The more pristine, the more valuable. For the past 30 years, cards have been graded on a scale of 1 to 10 by independent grading companies. The highest graded Honus Wagner T206 is an 8. The highest price paid for a Wagner is $7.25 million, for a card with a grade of 2. The Shields’ Wagner was deemed a 1.

This past year, a 2007-08 basketball card signed by both Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan blew past estimates and fetched $12.9 million at auction. The winner was a private equity group. That sale might have some effect on the Wagner, though Michener notes that the buyers for historical cards and the buyers for modern cards are two quite-distinct groups.

Michener postulates that, regarding the Shields’ Honus Wagner, after a lot of hype, for which Goldin Auctions is known, “things usually get reset higher,” leading to the possibly of achieving a price zooming above the $5 million estimate.

Meanwhile, Salter remains wistful about the family Honus Wagner card currently rattling the world of collectibles. “I wish it weren’t worth what it is so it could still be in the family,” he said, and asked, rhetorically, “Do I care that some private equity person is going to buy it? We’ve had this for a hundred years.”

The uncles gave Salter the framed group of Brooklyn Dodgers cards. It’s a beautiful display from Mr. Salter’s great-grandfather’s collection, and an heirloom in its own right.