A Mike Trout Rookie Card Broke The World Record For The Most Expensive Sports Card Ever Held By The Honus Wagner T-206 Card After Selling For Almost $4 MILLION
SI- A Mike Trout rookie card set the new record for highest-price sold at auction on Saturday night when it was purchased for nearly $4 million, Goldin Auctions announced Sunday. The 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Mike Trout Superfractor signed Rookie Card Serial sold for $3.936 million, surpassing the previous record held by a 1909 Honus Wagner T-206 card, which sold for $3.12 million in 2016. The identity of the Trout card's buyer was not made public.
DOWN GOES WANGER! DOWN GOES WANGER! DOWN GOES WAGNER!!!
I know this blog may be a little "Inside Baseball" since the baseball card industry could be dead, completely virtual, or extremely niche followed only by extreme weirdos. But as someone that grew up when the baseball card industry was booming and held a ton of #RE2PECT for the Honus Wagner T-206 rookie card as the Holy Grail of baseball cards despite not knowing a fucking thing about Honus Wagner the player, I have to say this sale may be the most impressive thing of Mike Trout's career. Finishing in the Top 2 of the MVP race during every season of his career where he played more than 130 games (he finished 4th in 2017 after slashing 33/72/.306 in 114 games due to injury) and being the closest thing we have seen to a Baseball God since Barry got off the sauce is cool. But breaking a record many people didn't think could be broken, during a global pandemic buckling the knees of the world economies no less, is the stuff of GOATs. Yes, even more unbreakable than Wade Boggs' 64 beers on a cross country flight.
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Rob Manfred may not love that Mike Trout is a baseball robot that shows up, quietly hits the everliving shit out of the baseball for 6 months, then goes home for the fall because his team inevitably lets him down. But Trout is clearly pretty beloved by people that actually care about the game of baseball or at least people that care enough about a shiny piece of cardboard with a name scribbled on it by who may be the best baseball player we see in our lives to the point they'd pay almost $4 million goddamn dollars for it. And yes, I would give anything if it was revealed Steve Cohen bought this card as an appetizer to buying the Mets just as a way to announce to the rest of the baseball world that he gets whatever the fuck he wants.
I guess I have to figure out a way to add the Trout card to my collection of the three greatest cards ever produced to make it a Mount Rushmore.
Excuse me, I already have the fourth member of that Mount Rushmore in giant poster form.
Looks like poor Honus is getting booted out of this exclusive club since its just first loser for Most Expensive Card Ever now that Mike Trout has taken down yet another legend (I hate that Bowman's Best got all this shine because I hated those cards back when I was grinding as CEO of Clemmy Card Trader Global living and dying with every Beckett issue. But considering the Honus Wagner card was made by the American Tobacco Company, it makes perfect sense that stupid Bowman got their day in the sun).
P.S. Gotta shout out Don West for all the fellow Olds like me that grew up watching him scream about Gem Mint 10s as the Mike Trout of shopping network salesmen