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Old 05-07-2010, 08:27 PM
benchod benchod is offline
Craig
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Mark,
Wagner's own Granddaughter is qouted as saying that Wagner had the card pulled because he didn't want children to have to buy tobacco in order to get his card. What is a myth is that he was anti tobacco himself. The following is from the New York Public Library:

Distributed with Sweet Caporal Cigarettes, ca. 1909–11, the Honus Wagner baseball card is perhaps the most revered of all 20th-century baseball memorabilia, and — because only a very limited number of cards survived after Wagner caused it to be pulled from circulation — it is touted as the rarest of all baseball cards. But Wagner was no anti-smoking zealot. His granddaughter set the record straight in 1992: "He always had a wad of chewbacca in his mouth, and he wasn't against tobacco at all. His concern was he didn’t want children to have to buy tobacco in order to get his card. . . . That’s the fact behind it. It wasn’t that he didn’t get paid for it, or he was against tobacco, he just didn’t want children to have to buy tobacco at a young age in order to get his cards."

Last edited by benchod; 05-07-2010 at 08:29 PM.
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