From "T206 Honus Wagner card sells for $5.1 million after 116 years with same family" (NYT).
I don't accept the expression "one of the.... true grails." Don't pluralize "grail." There's one holy grail...
.... and if "grail" applies to baseball card trading, everyone seems to have agreed that it's the Honus Wagner card. But it's not as though there's only one. There are 50 or 60s of these slips of cardboard floating about.
Mga Post
41 komento:
For those who are confused. The picture is the Holy Grail by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. That's not Honus Wagner.
I thought it was Honus after he transitioned.
Isn't the BB card thing a racket and a tax dodge?
There may be only one holy grail, but let's stay focused on how the importance of this 100 year old piece of cardboard from Grandpa cannot be overstated. Now, under $5 million, we can talk.
Did the auctioneer get a Honus Bonus?
The only things we have that are 150 years old are junk: a cannonball (never used for some reason), a wheat scythe and a moth eaten icon.
"...On August 3, 2022, a T206 Honus Wagner was sold in a private sale for a sports card record high of $7.25 million, eclipsing the previous high of $6.6 million...
Hey ! Wait a minute......
A liberal nightmare, Honus looks like a cross between Steven Miller and Ted Cruz.
a card? geez people. I hope these same rich collectors give generously to real charities. (not anything named "Clinton")
Her hands are too big. Rossetti messed up on that.
Now we're getting Pre-Raphaelites on this blog! Couldn't be happier unless Althouse doubles-down and starts posting William H. Hunt as well.
Pre-Raphaelite paintings are not favored by collectors. You can probably pick up this picture of the Holy Grail for around fifteen million. So I guess you'd need a Honus Wagner card and maybe a few 1927 Yankee cards to purchase it. It's reassuring to know that we live in a civilization that prizes pictures of the Holy Grail more than baseball cards.........There's a paradox with collectables. If you think they're worth collecting, then they're not. Beanie Baby collections are not worth much because people collected them.
Highly recommend “Rossetti” by Evelyn Waugh. It was his first book and non-fiction.
I used to collect paintings of dogs playing poker, but the market is being flooded with AI products, some of them quite convincing.
Cards and grail(s) were not on my bingo card for today. But. This is why I am addicted to Althouse.
What can I get for my Elvis on velvet painting?
Hey, didn't Indiana Jones "prove" that the Holy Grail was just a humble cup and that the rich couldn't see it through their greedy eyes? The true collectable Holy Grail is Spuds MacKenzie Bud Light swag before Dylan Mulvaney happened. Everyone knows that!
It’s more of a tangible asset than all bitcoins combined.
Johannes Wagner was considered by most of his contemporaries as the greatest player of his era, the pre-Babe Ruth, pre-1920 dead ball era.
That is not why this card is so valuable. The card was issued by the company without Wagner's assent. Wagner did not wish his name associated with a tobacco product collected by children, and demanded they recall it. This is why so few of the cards ever made it to market, and hence its scarcity.
Wagner was a good guy generally, known to be friendly and helpful to rookies, something almost unheard of then. If I recall correctly, he was described in his later years by Bill James as always willing to share a drink with an admirer, and having no shortage of admirers.
Can we get Meade's wife in a bikini playing card to accompany her recent furry look?thx
There was only one Honus Wagner. For whatever that’s worth.
I love the classic American muscle cars of the 1964-1972 era. But I could never buy one now simply because they have become expensive collectibles that need to be carefully maintained and rarely driven to maintain their desirability.
William said, "Pre-Raphaelite paintings are not favored by collectors."
Tasteless sloshheads.
As someone who should know the only ‘tax dodge’ with collectibles would happen if an owner were to have a…favorable appraisal then donate the item. I’d have to stew on some other possibility. Art gets loaned so maybe something there…
The kid down the street from me inherited a shoebox of grandpa’s baseball cards including some of these wagner era what came in the pack of smokes. There were later cards too. I lost touch the kid but will always be curious how much that box would be worth today…
I once had to research investment returns of various asset classes over eras and was shocked to discover the best performing asset class is… Chinese porcelain.
The last time I cared about baseball, there were still people alive who had memories of when Honus Wagner was alive and even of his playing days. But baseball is all about nostalgia.
Time is of the essence. Remember Terry?
Remember Stonewall Jackson, Lindstrom, Frisch,
When they were good? Remember Long George Kelly?
Remember John McGraw and Benny Kauff?
Remember Bridwell, Tenney, Merkle, Youngs,
Chief Meyers, Big Jeff Tesreau, Shufflin’ Phil?
Remember Mathewson, Ames, and Donlin,
Buck Ewing, Rusie, Smiling Mickey Welch?
Remember a left-handed catcher named Jack Humphries,
Who sometimes played the outfield, in ’83?
From the poem by Rolfe Humphries.
Here's the sort of trivia I know by virtue of speaking a dozen languages and having had a mother who was a true scholar of our English language. "Holy Grail" was a bumbling misunderstanding of French, transferred into Middle English.
"Le sang réel" -- "the actual blood" [of Christ] -- as Roman Catholics believed that wine became when blessed by the priest in the Communion chalice, got all befuddled. In French we tend to 'liaison' strong consonants onto vowels or weak consonants, like R, at the beginning of the next word, so "Sang réel" --> "San gréel" --> "Saint [=holy] gréel" --> "Holy Grail".
There's your dose of pedantic linguistic trivia for the week.
That from a woman who could read Old English in the original manuscripts, yet when I was 15 and this time of year brought some pussy willows into the house, asking "Why do we call them pussy willows?", smiled and said " 'Pussy' is an Early Middle English word for 'soft', like 'pussy willow', 'pussy cat', and, well ... 'pussy PUSSY' ... but I don't want you exploring that last meaning anytime soon. Okay?"
In collecting a ‘grail’ is a often rare and highly valuable item that someone seeks. Since a grail can be different for many people there ends up being many ‘grails’. In the case of some rare baseball cards or comics there will almost always be more than one available but their scarcity makes them a ‘grail. The Cambridge dictionary defines grail as “something that people want and are looking for but that is difficult to find or get.” So it’s a ‘grail’ not a ‘Holy Grail’. I won’t deny the use of the word has strayed from its original meaning but that’s the living language. A grail can also be something sought for but not yet acquired. Usually because of price.
Grail is being used metaphorically. Metaphors can be plural. Not a great use of metaphor, perhaps. But a metaphor for a rare desirable thing. there are lots of such things.
@rehajm: I’d have to stew on some other possibility. Art gets loaned so maybe something there…
I think a large part of the art market is among Epstein's crowd: Party A buys famous art for record price $X at an auction. Party B then buys it from Party A at $X + $Y for a publicly laundered profit.
Party B needs to put drug, bribe, and extortion profits somewhere. Then, a few years later Party B sells to a Party C collector who wants to get in on the momentum but ends up the greater fool.
Jeff Koons turned this opportunity a business model that shifts money around Wall St. in the form of very, very, very expensive and cliched balloon dog sculptures.
Enigma said...
"@rehajm: I’d have to stew on some other possibility. Art gets loaned so maybe something there…
I think a large part of the art market is among Epstein's crowd: Party A buys famous art for record price $X at an auction. Party B then buys it from Party A at $X + $Y for a publicly laundered profit.
Party B needs to put drug, bribe, and extortion profits somewhere."
Hunter Biden likes your thinking!
"There are 50 or 60s of these slips of cardboard floating about."
"What? You paid $5.1 million for a piece of cardboard. You're even more stupid than Jack. He at least got five magic beans."
I left out the poignant conclusion of the poem:
Time is of the essence. The crowd and players
Are the same age always, but the man in the crowd
Is older every season. Come on, play ball!
Poetry has a way of condensing what Ken Burns and George Will and George Plimpton and John Updike will talk your ear off saying.
…well, keep in mind fine art and collectibles markets are international, where many collectors don’t want or need the same financial strategies wealthy Americans use to reduce income. In fact new wealth Asians and other new entrants in the Middle East are doing their part in driving record prices…
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...
"Holy Grail" was a bumbling misunderstanding of French, transferred into Middle English.
"Le sang réel" -- "the actual blood" "
Grok and Gemini are saying that is a myth or "folk etymology".
I was Googlemachining some college friends a few years ago and found one of them appearing as Honus Wagner on interview shows around Denver (well, at least one show).
It didn't surprise me--he had played minor league ball at some point and loved the game and the lore, and had strong thespian tendencies IYKWIM.
When collecting Wagner cards, I prefer Wieland. Quite rare and controversial. CC, JSM
’Wagner was a good guy generally, known to be friendly and helpful to rookies, something almost unheard of then. If I recall correctly, he was described in his later years by Bill James as always willing to share a drink with an admirer, and having no shortage of admirers.’
My dad grew up in the Pittsburgh area and as a kid was one day selling tomato stakes on the side of the road in his suburb when Honus stopped and bought some. Not only was my dad happy to make a sale but Wagner talked to him about baseball for a minute or two, and that may have been the highlight of his otherwise rough childhood.
Wagner did not wish his name associated with a tobacco product collected by children, and demanded they recall it. This is why so few of the cards ever made it to market, and hence its scarcity.
Didn't know that.
Makes sense.
Mag-post ng isang Komento
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.