Baseball Card Goes for $1.265 Million On eBay

The T206 Honus Wagner, baseball's most valuable card, has been sold on eBay by Robert Edward Auctions, a division of MastroNet Inc, for $1.265 million. Robert Edward Auctions chose ImagePump from Xippix Inc. to allow prospective bidders of the rarest baseball card in existence to see its details online. The 10-day private auction on eBay ended on July 15 with 13 bids from a starting bid price of $500,000. The final bid price is almost double the $641,500 paid in 1996 for the same card. The high bidder, a sports memorabilia collector from Southern California, confirmed that he inspected the card with ImagePump prior to submitting his final bid. Larkspur, Calif.-based Xippix's ImagePump permitted viewers to zoom, pan and scroll the Honus Wagner baseball card on eBay's Web site during the course of the auction. MastroNet will also implement ImagePump throughout its sports collectibles site, it says. ImagePump is a scalable imaging application platform that allows e-commerce sites to build brand identity and increase online purchasing behavior by enhancing the image viewing experience on the Internet.