US baseball card sells for £1.2million

The "Holy Grail of US baseball cards," the famous 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card once owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky, has sold for a record-setting $2.35million (£1.2million).

The anonymous buyer has only been identified as a Southern California collector.

There are about 60 of the tobacco cards in existence featuring the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop, one of the first five players to be inducted in Baseball's Hall of Fame.

The seller, Brian Seigel, paid a then-record 1.26 million dollars (£642,000) in 2000 for the prize card, which is in better condition than the rest.

"This particular one was preserved in spectacular condition," said Joe Orlando, president of Professional Sports Authenticator of Newport Beach, California - the company that certified the authenticity of the card.

Still, the Wagner cards are so rare that even those in much worse condition will sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Mr Seigel said.

The others "you could stick in the middle of the street and let cars drive over it through the day, take it in your hand and crumple it up, and it still would be a 100,000 dollars card," said Mr Seigel, Chief Executive Officer of Emerald Capital, an asset management company, who lives in Las Vegas.