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It took only twelve hours for bidding on the “Oceanside” T206 Honus Wagner in the online Robert Edward Auctions to go from its opening bid of $100,000, to the current bid of over $1,000,000. Bidding was so fast and furious that it went from $400,000 to $800,000 in less than three hours! And that’s just the beginning – the auction is only 24 hours old, and will run until April 25.

But it is the brief sales history of the Oceanside Wagner that tells the real story about the strength of the sports card industry. The “Oceanside” Wagner, so named because it was one of a collection of early 1900s tobacco cards found in a basement on Long Island in Oceanside, New York, sold at auction for $791,000 in 2008. So even if there were no additional bids between now and the conclusion of the Robert Edward Auctions in three weeks (a virtual impossibility), the Wagner card will have increased in value by more than 25%.

One of the most unique aspects of the Oceanside Wagner is its limited ownership history. The winning bidder of the present auction will be only the card’s third owner following the original Oceanside owner and the winner of the 2008 auction. The card has been graded a PSA 3 VG, one of the eight highest graded T206 Wagners in existence, and one of only 46 Wagners in total.

A lot has happened since 2008. Many homes are worth a lot less today than they were in 2008. Tiger Woods is worth a lot less today than he was in 2008. The Philadelphia Phillies, 2008’s World Series Champions, are about as far from the World Series as any team in baseball.

But through it all, the standard bearer for the sports card collectible industry, the T206 Wagner, has not only maintained its value, but is far exceeding it. There are few other things, if any, that the buyer of this card could have invested in back in 2008 that would have given him such a large return just seven years later in 2015. Vintage baseball cards are, and always have been, a remarkably reliable investment with a secure floor and virtually limitless ceiling.

A review of the detailed auction history on the auction’s website shows just how incredible the bidding has been. The bidder who bid $410,000 at the beginning of his lunch break at 12:06 pm was outbid by $290,000 for a total bid of $700,000 by 12:34 pm, before he could even finish his sandwich¹. And the high bid of $700,000 at 12:34 pm was a distant memory by bedtime at 10:11 pm when the bid was already over the million dollar mark.

Of course the bidding cannot continue to at its current pace for the entire remaining three weeks of the auction, but Just Collect predicts that the bidding still has plenty of upward momentum to go. Based on an analysis of the bidding history and other T206 Wagner sales between 2008 and the present, Just Collect is estimating that the “Oceanside” version is going to sell for between $1,600,000 and $1,800,000 when the auction ends on April 25. The T206 Honus Wagner card is the Mona Lisa of baseball cards, something I spoke about on Bloomberg.

Congratulations to Robert Edward Auctions on what is already a hugely successful auction, and may well turn out to be one of historic proportion.

¹ To be clear, the dollar amounts and times of the bids are 100% true and verified. Just Collect does not know whether the bids were placed during the bidders’ lunch breaks, or how quickly the bidders ate their sandwiches.