I think provenance is an enhancer to a card. I never really understood the Mr. X psa thing though.
What about cards that have come out of collections such as the "Oregon Find"? I think a collection like that (even though the collector was basically unknown) is special in its own right. Speaking of which, I'm not outing anything here but look at the following card:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...STRK:MEBIDX:IT
I think it's from the "Oregon Find". The tell tale signs are the two adhesive marks on the back of the card. It would have been interesting if Dave would have had these cards slabbed with an "Oregon Find" provenance label from SGC. I guess this is before slabbing companies started to do that. By the way, which is the first collection of cards to be given a provenance status on the a flip of slab? Was it the "Harris Collection" by PSA?