It's business as usual at Goldin Auctions this week.
The latest white whale came in the form of 250 white bears.
A Polar Bear Brand PSA-Graded 1909-1911 T206 White Border complete set has broken the record for this sub-set at $79,300. Each card in the set has been graded by PSA. Amongst them Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young and many more.
These T206 entries were produced with cardback advertisements for the "Polar Bear" brand of scrap tobacco. No higher-graded examples in this configuration have been confirmed, and the array includes one card with the “Pop 1, None Graded Higher” distinction.
What Exactly is a T206?
There is little doubt you understand the significance and value that a 115-year old complete set of baseball cards holds. But what is it about the T206 cards that places them in a league of their own?
Even upon release, the T206 (the catalog designation assigned by Jefferson Burdick in his book The American Card Catalog) was a landmark set of its time. The size of the card, the instant rarity, the quality of the color lithographs, and the various poses of all 524 minor and major league players made the set one of the most popular and widely collected sets of the tobacco/pre-war era. But you've likely heard of the T206 for another reason.
The T206 Honus Wagner is the most valuable baseball card in existence. Speaking to its scarcity, the T206 Wagner is not a part of the 250-card Polar Bear Brand set, which was just one of 16 different tobacco brands that were featured on the 1909-1911 cards.
Steve Lucas, VP Consignment Director at Goldin adds 'The 1909-11 T206 White Border release is a widely collected set in the hobby due to its size (500+ cards), heavy concentration of Hall of Famers (including multiple examples of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and others) and was produced with a plethora of different advertising backs. Ranked "#2" on the PSA Set Registry, this assembly contained a complete 250-card complete set of "Polar Bear"-branded backs which created an instant opportunity for a collector to acquire this attractive sub-set with one bid. Our research indicated that this was the only PSA-graded complete set to be offered at auction.
These gems were not created without their own set of pressures. As per Goldin Auctions '"Polar Bear" is notorious among the issue's reverse-side designs in that the subject items were distributed with loose, inherently moist or oily leaf tobacco, as opposed to experiencing relatively harmless proximity to finished cigarettes.'
I'd be keen to see how a box break of 115-year old cardboard stuffed beside loose-leaf tobacco goes down. You never know what Goldin Auctions is going to do next.
