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Eight bids have driven the Honus Wagner 1910 tobacco baseball card in Goldin Auctions up to $1.8 million. By the time the hammer falls on October 1st, it will surely smash the record of $2.8 million set in 2007 for the “The Gretzky Wagner” once owned by the hockey great Wayne Gretzky. On Fox Business Ken Goldin predicted that it would sell for $4 million. In his catalogue, his estimate is $5 million.
The "MC" on the Jumbo Wagner refers to it being "miss cut." In this case, there is extra border on... [+]
Ironically the fates of these top two Wagners are inextricably linked. The Jumbo Wagner, so named because of its extra border on the bottom, may well be the superior card— from a certain, impartial perspective. At first glance, this assertion flies in the face of the obvious facts. The Jumbo Wagner was independently graded in excellent condition (PSA 5) and the Gretzky in near mint-mint (PSA 8). Condition and content determine a card’s value.
But if you parse Goldin’s words, there is a dramatic distinction between these two cards as important as their grades. “The [Jumbo’s] provenance makes it unique among all Wagners and virtually all 100+-year-old cards,” he told me. “To know the original owner and every owner since is remarkable, and it adds an important element to the card that verifies it in its original condition, unaltered over time.” At the same time, his catalog description hails the Wagner as “the finest and most pure, authenticated T206 Wagner that has been confirmed in the industry.” (Emphasis mine.)
The Wagner is a card "men lose their lives for." (Photo by Goldin Auctions)
If you don’t follow vintage baseball cards, you may not know that in 2013 former hobby kingpin Bill Mastro finally confessed in Federal court to “trimming” the Gretzky Wagner to give it four sharper corners, thus bolstering its condition and value. Mastro has almost finished half his 20-month prison sentence primarily for shill bidding in his auctions, i.e. artificially inflating prices. A superb account of his prison life is on Sports Collectors Daily.
For years, the allegation of trimming had clung to Mastro like bubblegum to pasteboard. In their lively 2007 book, The Card, the New York Daily News’ Teri Thompson and Michael O’Keeffe alleged that the Wagner had been sloppily cut from an in-tact T206 sheet at a card shop in Long Island. “Either [the perpetrators] committed the most heinous crime in card-doctoring history or a stunt worthy of the Keystone Cops,” they wrote.
In 1985 Mastro bought it for $25,000 and flipped it for $110,000 two years later. “Mastro always swatted away rumors that the ‘The Card’ had been altered, flying into a rage at the slightest suggestion that its bright colors, clean edges, and sharp corners are the result of skillful surgery,” the authors wrote.
An armed security guard watches boys pose with the Wagner at the National Sports Collectors... [+]
Trimming a baseball card to improve its appearance and value is a cardinal sin. This story appeared... [+]
In Mint Condition, another read I highly recommend, which was published three years after The Card, Dave Jamieson confronted Mastro with the book’s charge: “He dismissed the book with a wave of the hand, claiming that the authors’ probing only further sullied a tarnished hobby.”
Josh Evans, chairman of Lelands, one of the oldest auction houses, spoke to the FBI during its investigation. “[The trimming] was common knowledge,” he told me. “I went over to this house and he had a paper trimmer.” Evans added that when rumors of him messing with the Wagner leaked, Mastro repeatedly called him. “He told me to shut the #!@ up,” Evans said.
In the category of you can’t make this stuff up, I found an amazing little gem in Stephon Wong’s luscious 2005 coffee table book, Smithsonian Baseball. “It is commonly understood that restoring baseball cards is taboo,” Mastro wrote in a short guide to collecting. “As a collector, you have the right to know if an item has been restored. Any restoration should be disclosed to potential buyers. Trimming, color touching, inpainting, paper filling, and Japanese-tissue paper reinforcement in varying degrees require disclosure. Most collectors prefer to avoid drastically restored pieces, even if the restoration eludes easy detection.”
In Brooklyn, where I live, we call this chutzpah.
One grade can mean the difference between tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for top cards. The removal of bubble gum and wax pack stains falls within “the limits of acceptability for many collectors,” explained O’Keeffe and Thompson. Fewer collectors accept smoothing out creases and wrinkles, they said, though in my travels at card shows I’ve found it a lot harder to do than they suggest.
Many collectors and dealers have told me that trimming crosses the Rubicon because anything that adds or subtracts is absolutely verboten. “Trimming may be the worst alteration we have to deal with in our hobby,” wrote Andy Broome, the Senior Vintage Card Grader with Beckett Grading Services (BGS), in the June issue of Beckett Vintage Collector. “No card is immune from it, from pre-war to the latest Bowman Chrome.” Due to the lack of uniformity in sizes, T206s are particularly susceptible.
The hallowed status of the Gretzky or Mastro Wagner, as some now call it, defies conventional rules. “I could sell that in two seconds,” Evans said. “It’s the Teflon Wagner, like those things men lose their lives for. You’ve got one of the legendary characters in the hobby [Mastro]. It’s like the gun that Jack Ruby used or Bugsy Siegal investing in Las Vegas.”
The Gretzky/Wagner belongs to Arizona Diamondbacks owner, Ken Kendrick. An informed source tells me that he has turned down a $10 million offer. For hobby purists, the Jumbo Wagner may turn out to be a bargain, after all.
O’Keeffe and Thompson conclude that “When all the hype and money are removed, [the Gretzky] is still a souvenir of a great athlete and another time and is still a beautiful card” The same holds true for the Jumbo.
