E98 is one of five "sister sets" where the images were taken from a common pool of subjects, depending upon the desired makeup of the set. Anonymously issued, there are 30 E98's in the checklist, which is handily shown on the reverse of each card. Each subject came in four different background colors and in addition to the orange seen here, green, red and blue backgrounds can be found. While the infamous Black Swamp find several years back skewed the populations and numbers of high grade cards in the set for certain players, orange was in short supply in the cache. While the SGC and PSA pop reports are a bit of a mess in terms of identifying the four backgrounds, the Orange Wagner seems to exist in very small numbers compared to the rest of the colors.
The SGC 3 example seen here has retained its bright orange primary color and the secondary colors on Wagner proper are also quite pleasing, as are the wide borders. Corner rounding and a crease in the lower right corner are fairly unobtrusive, although there is a spot of paper loss on the reverse. Wagner remains one of the most popular players in the hobby, invariably inviting spirited bidding when his cards are offered.