I Have Acquired an Honus Wagner Rookie!
mouschi
Posts: 687 ✭✭✭✭
First, let me say right off, no, I didn't purchase a T206 Honus Wagner. What I did pickup, however, predates the T206 by at least a decade and is significantly rarer! This was definitely an Indiana Jones moment for me.
Let me introduce you to my newest piece: The 1899-00 M101-1 Sporting News Honus Wagner Rookie! I have only seen six others up for sale in auction houses this century, and half of them have significant amounts of it cut away. This is one of the finest examples of this premium insert to ever hit the market!
The funny thing is, I didn't even know this existed last month! I recently fell head over heals for the 1909-13 M101-2 Sporting News Supplements (the successor of the M101-1s), and was able to pick up my three favorites from the entire set. I love the sepia tone, the way the photographer captured each player, and the large format. They are fantastic conversation pieces and display beautifully.
With as rare as the M101-2s are, the M101-1s are much rarer. They were created during the "dead period" of baseball cards. When the ATC (American Tobacco Company) formed in around 1890, there really wasn't a need to create any cards for advertising purposes, so with as wild as collecting was in the late 1880s, baseball cards nearly disappeared for a couple decades until 1909, aside from a couple issues. The M101-1 set was created right in the middle of this time period.
I was looking online through some people's Honus Wagner pieces in their collections, and noticed someone posted the Wagner rookie. It felt like I was casting my eyes on the Mona Lisa for the first time! How in the world could a private individual have something so magnificent as an Honus Wagner rookie - from the 19th century?! Shouldn't that be in a museum somewhere???
Merely knowing that Wagner had a 19th century issue rookie was thrilling to me. It fuses two key time periods - a time where the likes of Cap Anson and King Kelly ruled the diamond, and a time when Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth were household names. Honus Wagner was considered the best player on the planet before Cobb entered the scene, and this piece feels like it gives these two time periods some semblance of continuity. I always think of Wagner as an early 20th century guy, leading the Pirates to victory over Ty Cobb's Tigers in the 1910 World Series.
I reached out to the owner, and within a week, we were able to make a deal - the same time when Wagner's PSA 1 T206 broke a sales record again. Here it is, posed next to my Candy Wagner, the 1910 E90-2 Honus Wagner.
If you don't know anything about the Candy Wagner, here is a little information for you.
The E90-2 Candy Wagner is my favorite card of his by a long shot. I love that it utilizes the same Carl Horner portrait that the T206 has, and am a big sucker for the beautiful bright blue background. I was extremely excited to display it with the Wagner rookie. Unbeknownst to me until I started writing this article, I found out that the date I purchased the E90-2 Candy Wagner was exactly 120 years after the release date of the 1899 M101-1 Sporting News Honus Wagner! August 19th, 1899 - August 19th 2019! Talk about a connection!
Shown below are a few shots of how the Wagner rookie displays with some of my other large format pieces such as my 1888 Allen & Ginter album with set, 1909-13 M101-2s and part of my 1889 A35 Goodwin set (in case you missed it, these feature some of my custom work you can see by clicking here.)
The more I get into displaying my collection, the more I realize how impressive larger format pieces are and how much I love them. They present beautifully and I get so much more enjoyment out of them than I do with many cards that just sit in a box.
To think this cabinet once held the world's largest unique Jose Canseco baseball card collection, and later, a bunch of 1980's wax boxes. My, how times change!
So, there you have it, my 1899 Honus Wagner rookie card ... errr ... rookie 
While I still am dumbfounded that this piece isn't sitting in a museum, I'm super thankful to have it in my own personal collection to enjoy. It helps me to pretend I have a small museum of baseball history all to myself! It makes me want to party like it's 1899.
https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2020/09/i-have-acquired-an-honus-wagner-rookie.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18gLQ8ll_F4
Comments
Wow. Impressive.
I love the image of Wagner on that Sporting News, he looks so intense!
TL; DR
Just kidding Tanner. That is way frickin cool.
@mouschi
Uhh, you DO have a museum! Absolutely stunning collection! Thank you for sharing all this!
Thank you very much guys! @GreenSneakers - haha right?! This might actually be the shortest one yet...and it is still long! @Rofles thank you very much for the kind words!
nice.
I am not familiar enough with very early supplements to know this, but I am guessing you are. Is this something that was inserted loose into the newspaper/magazine or whatever form The Sporting News took them or was it something that needed to be cut out?. Also, is it thicker than a newspaper or magazine page or the same?
I am a big fan of the more modern newspaper cutout "cards" (Dayton News, Montreal News, Detroit Press, Long Beach Press Telegram, Wichita Beacon, etc), and I use card loosely, as these newspaper items seem to be a variety of sizes, none of which seem to match the modern Topps size that everyone has grown to love. Of course all of what I am talking about were either 1 time or periodic inserts that were meant to be clipped and saved and were not loose.
The Padres "cards" I have that are mostly 1982-1986 and have yet to be "discovered" by the masses. They are not cataloged in any of the guides to my knowledge, but are no different than most of the others I listed. They were included in a supplement to the regular newspaper, and the entire set was within 1 issue.
Beautiful! Congratulations !
Great collection of vintage/Wagner!
Good question! I have more research to do on these, so I'm not sure if they were loose or had to be cut out. I think they were loose though. I do feel what you are saying about the newer pieces. Check out these that I just landed a few months ago - I didn't know they even existed until recently! https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2020/07/1988-san-jose-mercury-news-baseball-cards-these-are-completely-new-to-me.html
I saw that sheet somewhere and would love to have one myself. What did you do with the rest of the team? Sometimes I will pick up partials just to have an example, if someone wants/keeps some of a set but doesn't want the rest.
When it comes to newspaper cut-out cards, I am a fan in general and don't care what the team featured is, I still would collect them regardless.
Most of them are still here, in uncut form!
Let me know what you want for whats left and what is missing besides Canseco (if anything), if you are interested in moving the rest.