J. Ross Greene has plenty of reason to celebrate these days. Since stepping forward last month to reveal that he has been the secret owner of a very special Honus Wagner for the past 21 years, his card has soared to $417,724 in a current SCP Auction closing on June 10.
For about two decades, J. Ross Greene kept a deep, delightful secret. Outside of his circle of family and close friends and one or two people in the hobby, no one knew that in 1996 he spent the shocking sum of $46,000 on a baseball card ($103,000 in today’s money). “I didn’t have many friends who thought about baseball cards,” he told me from his home in the Atlanta area. “I’m sure they thought that ‘he’s got a lot of money or hasn’t got any sense.’”
Ross Greene has held onto the more coveted and valuable of baseball cards for 21 years, keeping it a secret to all but family and a few friends and stashing it in his sock drawer. But Greene, a Peachtree City resident and serious baseball-card collector, is relinquishing his Honus Wagner “T206” card, a 108-year-old card believed to be one of perhaps 60 in existence.
