A Honus Wagner baseball card has sold for over $6 million.

It is now by a wide margin the most valuable card of all time.

It tops a 1952 Mickey Mantle card that sold for $5.2 million in March,

a record later matched by a LeBron James autographed rookie card in April.

This was $6.6 million.

The business of sports cards is absolutely booming, validating everyone who grew up believing that these things were legitimate investments, while suddenly pricing most of us out.

But it's not just customers who can't really afford the hobby anymore,

it's also entire companies, including the industry leader. So today, we explain who is winning

this war over cardboard and whether all of it is just a house of cards.

I'm Pablo Torre. It's Thursday, August 26th.

This is ESPN.

So, Dan, you're our guy on the sports memorabilia beat, which is a beat that has mushroomed.

In the last, it feels like year or two now, every time I look, it feels like there are insane headlines that I don't fully understand.

Has it felt that way to you recently?

Yeah, I'll be honest.

Like covering this, I'll wake up some mornings.

And it's like, oh, I guess that's happened.

That's the real thing that exists.

Dan Hey, Ducky, is a reporter for ESPN and a trading card collector since childhood.

I don't know if you remember the seminal classic Vegas vacation.

Of course.

But Chevy Chase tries to plug the Hoover Dam up with a piece of gum and everything goes haywire.

...