As the 2025 Major League Baseball season gets set to begin, we start thinking about the love for the game as expressed and kept in cardboard form. In other words, baseball cards.
National Trading Card Day is Feb. 24, 2025. At PennStakes.com, where you can unseal the best PA sports betting promos at any time, wanted to see which states have the most valuable sports trading cards. We categorized the 40 most valuable trading cards, according to Wikipedia, by the state where the player’s team was located at the time (we only accounted for U.S.-based teams). The Pittsburgh Pirates had two of the most valuable cards.
Rank | State | Number of Top 40 Trading Cards |
1 | California | 10 |
2 | Ohio | 7 |
3 | New York | 6 |
4 | Pennsylvania | 4 |
5 | Illinois | 3 |
T6 | Texas | 2 |
T6 | Massachusetts | 2 |
T6 | Wisconsin | 2 |
T9 | Louisiana | 1 |
T9 | Kansas | 1 |
T9 | Oklahoma | 1 |
You can check out Pittsburgh Pirates 2025 playoff odds all season at PennStakes.com.
Collectors will not be surprised at which two Pirates Baseball Hall of Fame legends are high on this list. One might be the most famous trading card ever made.
One 1909 Honus Wagner T-206 card (with an adjusted price of $7,427,795) and one 1955 Roberto Clemente Topps card (adjusted price $1,107,000) are among the four most valuable baseball cards ever made and among the 16 most prized for any sport.
In a word: Scarcity. There was no “collectibles market” in the 1950s, when Clemente played, much less when Wagner was baseball’s best shortstop in the 1910s. Baseball cards were pretty popular by the 1950s but so many of them were thrown out, lost or damaged that a Clemente rookie card in good condition is quite rare (these factors also account for the No. 1 card on the list, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card, one of which has been valued at more than $13.1 million).
As for Wagner, it is believed that no more than 100 and perhaps as few as 50 of the T-206 cards were ever made of the eight-time National League batting champion. According to an MLB.com article from 2022, a Wagner T-206 card sold for $7.25 million that year (Goldin Auctions announced the amount). The T-206 set was produced to promote tobacco and, as legend has it, Wagner – a native of Chartiers, Pennsylvania – objected to the card’s production because he did not want to encourage children to use tobacco.
Pennsylvania is fourth on this list of most valued trading cards depicting players with pro franchises in the state, at four. The Wagner and Clemente cards are the big ones for any member of a franchise playing in the home of Pennsylvania sports betting.
The Keystone State used to have the Philadelphia Athletics and that franchise accounts for a third card on the big-money list. A 1909 card of Hall of Fame A’s pitcher Eddie Plank, a native of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, has been valued at $929,004 – and it’s from the same T-206 set that gave us the Wagner rarity. So is a card depicting Sherry Magee of the Philadelphia Phillies. That one (at $800,816) is a rarity among rarities because it’s an error card, industry lingo for a card that is released with an imperfection. Magee’s T-206 card had his name spelled “Magie” by mistake.
What’s not hard to find is top Pennsylvania online casino bonuses at PennStatkes.com, as well as continued sports coverage.
USA Today Network photo by Chris LaChall/Courier-Post
Author
Jim has more than 20 years of experience in sports journalism and covers sports, gambling and the intersection of those two industries for PennStakes.com. He has worked for publications such as the Tampa Bay Times, FanRag.com, SaturdayDownSouth.com and SaturdayTradition.com. He is passionate about getting Pennsylvania sports betting fans in the know and finding the latest PA sportsbook promos.
Cited by leading media organizations, such as:
