Rare Baseball Card a Home Run for Nuns

No swing and a miss here. These nuns have knocked one out of the park.

The School Sisters of Notre Dame, a Baltimore-based order of nuns, is today $220,000 richer, thanks entirely to the sale of a baseball card.

This wasn't just any baseball card, though. It was a rare one. The card in question was a Honus Wagner T206, of which only about 60 are known to exist.

The card, produced by the American Tobacco Company between 1909 and 1911, was discontinued soon after because the player wanted it gone. Wagner, one of the game's all-time greats (and, some say, the greatest shortstop ever to play the game), didn't want to encourage smoking by children, the natural audience for baseball cards. However, some sources say that Wagner demanded more money than ATC was willing to pay and that it was perhaps the tobacco company that pulled the plug on the Wagner card. Whatever the motivation, the card was no more.

The actual sale price was $262,000 and was rung up at an auction run by Heritage Auction Galleries, an outfit based in Dallas. The card will now be in the possession of Doug Walton, a collector and card shop owner from Knoxville, Tenn.

The nuns, who had to part with a buyer's premium off the top of the sale price, had the card in the first place because they inherited it from the brother of a nun. Virginia Muller, the sister in charge, says the money will go entirely to more than 30 countries around the world.

For more details, see this post.