[wolf441]

My apologies if this subject has already been covered (I did a quick search, but there are obviously quite a few threads on the T206 Wagner). If the original story of the Mastro Wagner card's origin is true and it was hand cut from a T206 sheet (along with its Eddie Plank "brother" card) back in the 1970's, why was there only one Wagner (and Plank) on the sheet? I've read quite a bit of the backstory, including "The Card", but all details about the original uncut sheet are pretty vague and generally told 2nd & 3rd hand. From the extensive research of the T206 experts on this site, it seems to me at least to be generally agreed that the cards were lined up vertically on the sheets with approximately four cards of the same player in a column (thus the relative 4:1 scarcity between same name top/bottom mis-cuts and different name mis-cuts). Is the prevaling theory that the Mastro Wagner came from a partial sheet or that the actual uncut sheet story itself is apocryphal? Or is it possible that there were rows on an uncut T206 sheet (perhaps the top & bottom, or either one or the other?) that only consisted of one player and not repeated on the sheet? The idea that the Wagner and Plank were solely on the top row or bottom row of a sheet and nowhere else and thus short printed could lend credence to the story of the original plate being damaged early in the print run and rendering the Plank (and perhaps even the Wagner) unusable in subsequent runs. The argument against this is the fact that every other player in that one row should also have been short printed and there does not seem to be any evidence to support this fact.

I'd be interested in any thoughts from the board and again, my apologies if I am going over ground that has already been covered.

Steve