Let’s take a break from the multi-million dollar bounties placed on social media for cards that were produced two minutes ago, shall we? 

One hundred and twenty-seven years ago today, (August 19th, 1899) on a hot Thursday in the summer of 1899, a young third baseman named John Wagner stared out from the pages of The Sporting News.

Not Honus. Not Hans. John.

“JOHN WAGNER, Third Baseman. LOUISVILLE, 1899.”  He would end up becoming arguably the best shortstop in baseball history.

The supplement – cataloged today as the M101-1, was tucked inside the August 19th edition of The Sporting News out of St. Louis, and delivered to subscribers and newsstands across the country. It was available for one day, 127 years ago. If you didn’t grab that week’s issue, you didn’t get it.

There were no slabs, no pop reports, no seven-figure auctions. There was just a 25-year-old ballplayer out of the coal country of western Pennsylvania, suiting up for the Louisville Colonels, a portrait rendered from a National Copper Plate engraving, and a date printed in plain type at the top of the page.

That date – August 19, 1899 – is what makes this piece unlike anything else in the Honus Wagner canon.

To understand how far away August 19, 1899 really is, consider the world that supplement landed in. The Wright Brothers were still four years from Kitty Hawk. Henry Ford wouldn’t build the Model T for another nine years. If you wanted to get somewhere, you walked, rode a horse, or took a train. There were roughly a million telephones in the entire country – for a population of 76 million. No radio. No television. If you wanted to know what was happening in baseball, you read a newspaper – which is exactly how The Sporting News reached its audience, and exactly why a supplement mattered.

Home refrigerators didn’t exist; you had an icebox if you were lucky. Air conditioning wouldn’t be invented until 1902. Aspirin was brand new – Bayer introduced it that very year. Sliced bread was 29 years away. There were only 45 states in the Union. Crayola crayons didn’t exist yet. Neither did teddy bears, vacuum cleaners, or tea bags.  There was no American League – it wouldn’t launch until 1901. There was no World Series – the first one wouldn’t be played until 1903 – ironically enough, Honus Wagner would play in it, but not do well. He would exact his revenge six years later in the 1909 World Series against Ty Cobb and the Tigers of Detroit.  (The Sporting News commemorates this clash of the titans in their M101-2 release.) 

As an aside, a newspaper article dated October 17th, 1909 states the following …

Quite an interesting find regarding the Hans Wagner cigars – it makes one wonder if/how that plays into the decision of his 1909 T206 being pulled.  Probably not, but maybe a fun thread to pull at later.

A Baseball Card Desert

The baseball card landscape was a desert at this point.  The M101-1 and National Copper Plate were dropped smack dab in the middle of a baseball card dead zone.

In this world – a world without flight, broadcast, or even newly released baseball cards – The Sporting News dropped a portrait of a 25-year-old third baseman from Louisville.

On that very morning, newspapers carried rumors that Wagner was about to be sold to Brooklyn. The Louisville Colonels were a franchise living on borrowed time – the National League was preparing to contract from twelve teams to eight, and Louisville was squarely on the chopping block. 

Brooklyn never got him. Instead, Louisville owner Barney Dreyfuss hatched a different plan entirely – he bought a controlling interest in the Pittsburgh Pirates, engineered a breathtaking deal that sent Wagner, Clarke, and a dozen other Louisville players to Pittsburgh in exchange for $25,000 and four players, and watched as the franchise he’d just gutted was eliminated from the National League entirely. Ironically enough, Wagner would ink the first endorsement deal for a sports personality with the Louisville Slugger. 

Wagner would spend the next eighteen years in Pittsburgh, win eight batting titles, lead the Pirates to a World Series championship in 1909, and become one of the five members of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s inaugural class, along with Ty Cobb (most votes), Babe Ruth (tied for 2nd with Honus Wagner), Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson. 

But all of that was in the future. On August 19, 1899, he was just a young man on a supplement whose face was being distributed to the baseball public for the first time on a mass-produced collectible. His inaugural appearance on what Jefferson Burdick would eventually catalog in the American Card Catalog. The M101-1.

The One Everyone Knows

Ask a casual fan – or even most serious collectors – to name Honus Wagner’s rookie card, and the answer comes without hesitation: the T206.

It’s the most famous piece of cardboard on earth. A restored copy that Keith Olbermann had been using as a paperweight – the so-called “Die-Cut Wagner,”  bounced back into the hobby this summer and sold for $1.33 million. A tip of the cap to the restorer who did the job in such a way that it still commanded seven figures.  I’m sure Keith, the auction house, and the new owner are all very pleased.  And right now, as I write this, Heritage Auctions has a rare Piedmont-back T206 Wagner on the block with a $4 million estimate and bidding already past $3 million. Earlier this year, the Shields Brothers’ Wagner – pulled from a Sweet Caporal pack in 1909 and kept in the same family for over a century – sold for $5.124 million at auction.

The T206 is the Mona Lisa. It’s the Holy Grail. No one is disputing any of that.

But it is not Honus Wagner’s rookie.

Wagner debuted on July 19, 1897. By the time the T206 set began its release in 1909, he had already played twelve full major league seasons and won six batting titles, with a seventh coming that very year. The T206 is iconic, historic, and worth every penny the market assigns to it. But it is not first.

So what is?

The Contenders

There are really only four collectibles that belong in this conversation. Let’s lay them out.

The 1898-99 National Copper Plate / 1899-00 Sporting News M101-1 Portrait

This gets a little tricky, so stick with me, as there are a few flavors of this to dissect.  

The NCP portraits were originally produced by National Copper Plate Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and sold directly by the company in a large format (~10 x 13ish”), issued in series of booklets that were stapled together. There is no branding or dating at the top.  The plan was apparently to release in 26 parts, published every Thursday, starting April 22, 1898.  The user Baseball Rarities (Kevin) at Net54 states that he found some fascinating advertisements (in The Sporting News) from April 9th to July 9th.  He was unable to find any additional ads after July 9th but notes that both the June 4th and July 9th ads state that they have six of these booklets available.  This leads me to believe that is where they stopped. 

NCP then contracted with The Sporting News to supply a smaller-format version (~8 3/4″ x 11″) of the same portraits, which were distributed in two ways. The first was as individual weekly insert singles – the M101-1 – which carry “Supplement to The Sporting News” and a specific issue date at the top.

The second was as a string-bound portfolio of 50 portraits, sold by The Sporting News for $2 with a one-year subscription. The portfolio pieces are the same size as the M101-1 but carry no Sporting News branding or date. Both smaller-format versions of the Wagner have “1899” printed at the bottom.  The versions without the Sporting News on top are also known by many as National Copperplates. 

It is also unknown to me if a large format Honus Wagner exists, as I have been unable to find one. That said, if the theory that NCP stopped producing them after the 6th booklet (June 4th as the ads suggest,) it would make sense that a large Wagner may not exist. The write up on the back of the Wagner states how he threw a ball 134+ yards. Contemporaneous periodicals reported this feat on October 22, 1898, which is obviously later than June 4th, and lines up nicely with the 1899 dating on the front of the Wagner. 

I found a wonderful wanted ad from the April 1, 1898 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel where NCP was recruiting “GOOD, LIVE HUSTLERS for new weekly art work, the Baseball Players of America; greatest seller of the century.”  This wanted ad ran through various newspapers from April 1-5, 1898. 

As mentioned above, on the reverse, you’ll find a printed player biography – a written account of who John Wagner was and what he’d done on the diamond. Portrait on the front, bio on the back – the prototype for the way traditional card issues would be designed for the next century and counting.  The collecting jury seems to be split on whether or not the “card” moniker fits, given its enormous size, and thickness, though, the fact that they are found in slabs (one slabbed in a PSA holder was recently seen) seems to ease the case for it being a card.  

It does beg the question – what makes a collectible a card?  Maybe we’ll save that for another article.  Regardless, given the size, the 1899 M101-1 Sporting News pieces are not likely to be relegated to dwell in a box, but rather displayed as conversation pieces, with the ability to be celebrated each year on their birthdate printed right on the front. 

The 1902 W600 Sporting Life Cabinet

A beautiful cabinet card from Sporting Life magazine, this one identifies Wagner as “John (‘Hans’) Wagner, Outfielder of the Pittsburg (N.L.) Club of 1902.” It’s significant for a few reasons – it’s ACC-cataloged, and it shows the transition in Wagner’s name: “John” is still primary, but “Hans” is acknowledged parenthetically. By this point Wagner was already a superstar – he’d won his first two batting titles in 1900 and 1901. It’s an important early Wagner, but it’s not his first, though, some may have an easier time calling this cabinet a card than they would one of the supplements above.  (Are Turkey Reds cards? Silks? The list goes on.) 

The 1903 E107 Breisch-Williams

This is the card that many in the hobby consider Wagner’s first traditional baseball card. Issued by Breisch-Williams, a confectionery company out of Oxford, Pennsylvania, the E107 set is widely regarded as the first major baseball card set of the 20th century – standard-sized cards inserted into packages of caramel candy, establishing the delivery format that would define the hobby for decades to come. Wagner appears in a suit, and the set is cataloged at E107 in the ACC. With only a handful of graded examples between SGC and PSA combined, the E107 Wagner makes the T206 look common by comparison. But by 1903, Wagner had already won two batting titles and led the Pirates to a pennant. A monumental card, and a legitimate case for “first traditional-format Wagner” – but not his first appearance.

The 1897-99(?) Henry Reccius Cigars Card

And then there’s the Reccius.

This is the card that has been marketed as “the true rookie” – PSA labels it 1897-99. Only three copies are known to exist, one of which resides in the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s an advertising trade card for Henry Reccius, a Louisville cigar manufacturer, and it features a young Wagner in a Louisville Colonels uniform promoting the “Hans Wagner ten-cent cigar.”

The case for the Reccius as the rookie rests almost entirely on the assumption that it was printed during Wagner’s Louisville years, 1897-1899. But that assumption has some serious problems.

The Reccius Problem

I’ve spent considerable time in the newspaper archives digging into this card, and the evidence for an 1897-99 date doesn’t appear to hold up under scrutiny.

The poem on the back. The reverse of the Reccius carries a pro-union parody of Joseph Bert Smiley’s “St. Peter at the Gate,” originally published in 1893. The parody version – the specific text printed on the Reccius – doesn’t appear in any newspaper archive that I could find until 1902, with additional appearances through 1910. The card cannot predate the poem on its own back. Though, the fact that the poem first appears in 1902 based upon my findings doesn’t necessarily mean that the parody didn’t exist prior to this. 

In 1907, apparently two bad guys were apprehended with this poem as well.  

The address. The front of the card lists Reccius at 2606 Elliott Avenue. MLB historian John Thorn’s research into Louisville city directories found that Reccius wasn’t recorded at that address until 1904. He had an unconfirmed Elliott Street listing as early as 1891, but without the specific house number.

The phone number. The front displays the number 6807, which PSA and auction houses have cited as consistent with Louisville’s pre-1900 four-digit phone system. But I found a September 10, 1905 listing in the Louisville Courier-Journal where Phil Reccius – Henry’s brother and the manager of a local baseball team – instructs readers to “Call Home ‘phone 6807.” The number 6807 is confirmed as the Reccius family phone number in 1905, at the Elliott Avenue address. It tells us nothing about the 1890s.

Further, I researched old newspapers from Louisville, and it doesn’t look like phone numbers starting with 6 happened until 1904 or so. 

Interestingly enough, there were people in 1901 fighting against the phone lines …

The name. People have argued that the card uses “Hans,” which they claimed was “adopted earlier in his career.” But here’s what the actual card record shows: the 1899 M101-1 calls him “John.” The 1902 W600 calls him “John (‘Hans’).” The 1903-04 Sporting Life cabinet calls him “John.” It isn’t until 1906 that “Hans” appears alone on a card – exactly as it does on the Reccius. On cataloged cards specifically, “Hans” without “John” is a post-1904 convention. The Reccius matches the later pattern, not the earlier one. And for what it’s worth, newspapers in the 1890s called him both “Hans” and “John” interchangeably, so the name alone proves nothing in either direction.

Here are pictures of Wagner, along with how they called him in three separate newspapers from 1899. (They are clearly utilizing the M101-1 portrait.) 

Every verifiable element on the Reccius – poem, address, phone number, naming convention – points to early 20th century. Nothing on the card requires an 1890s date. The Louisville uniform in the photo makes sense even though he was playing for Pittsburgh at the time – after all, it would make sense for him to utilize a Louisville photograph, being a cigar maker from Louisville.

Even the Baseball Hall of Fame, which owns one of the three known Reccius cards, describes it as “an early 20th-century card” – not a 19th-century one.

So which is the rookie?

  • The National Copper Plate & M101-1 are effectively both 1899 issues, and very likely his only 19th century issues, with the M101-1 being his first ever entry into the American Card Catalog
  • The W600 is more “cardier” looking being a cabinet, but a few years younger
  • The E107, though younger still, is perhaps the “cardiest” looking of the entries 
  • The Reccius is likely the more recent of the entire batch, though, it carries with it the greatest mystique / controversy, and is perhaps the rarest 

And Controversy is what we collectors thrive on.  We love what-ifs, and dream up concoctions on how/when things came about.  I get it – if you are one of the two or three people out there who own one, you *don’t* want controversy – you want a clear cut rookie title.  While I may present some new findings to counter that claim, the majority of it is nothing new.  Major League Baseball’s own Historian, the Hall of Fame, and many other vintage collectors date the Reccius in the early 20th century.

You can almost think of the Reccius as the Anti-M101-1 – there is no mystery. In fact, it is perhaps the only early issue that explicitly states its release to the very day, and to nerds such as myself, that matters tremendously.  It makes people want to celebrate the anniversary of its printing, and write TL;DR articles about its very existence. 

And if the Reccius really dates to the early 20th century, as the convergence of evidence suggests, then the M101-1 isn’t just the best-documented first appearance. It and the NCP are the only first appearances, period – standing alone as Wagner’s true 1899 rookies – rookie cards? Maybe, maybe not. But rookies, none the less.  

One hundred and twenty-seven years ago today, a kid from the Pennsylvania coal mines looked out from the pages of The Sporting News for the first time. He was listed as a third baseman, suiting up for a franchise that had only months left to live. He was about to be swept up in one of the most consequential deals in baseball history and carried to Pittsburgh, where he’d become the greatest shortstop who ever lived. He didn’t know any of that yet. He was just John Wagner. Louisville, 1899.

Happy birthday to the very first Honus Wagner recognized by the American Card Catalog, the 1899 Sporting News M101-1 Honus Wagner.