Another T-206 Wagner surfaces in Michigan, SURE!!!!!

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Posted By: Tony Galovich

a Ray Lumbert in Michigan just closed a deal & purchase a T-206 Honus Wagner card
He paid $25K in cash & added another $25k in cards to complete the deal
If it's real it's the deal of the yr
Seems the card was found in a kitchen ceiling!!
The new owner is willing to pay $10K to get it authenticated
Really ???
for a fraction of that price SGC or PSA could authenticate it for him
But I don't see that happening, I'm sure he doesn't trust anyone Or wouldn't want to mail it to someone he doesn't know
He is hoping to sell the card & pay off his home & live stress free
But how much stress will he gets when he finds out the card isn't real which is about 99.99% chances
Amazingly he has the card up for sale already via a auction
It will be this Sunday in Holt Michigan
The auctioneer is A-OK Auctioneers
Just the people I would call if I was going to sell A t-206 wagner
If u want info call 517 882 5914
& The owner claims if it's sells for top $$$ he will give the past owner a portion of the profits
Sure & next you will tell me Al Gore Will win A Nobel prize or Brittany Spear was voted Mother of The year

I don't know about you but these stories are getting real old
Everyone who finds a Wagner card is outside the hobby
They don't trust the Top Grading services
Except for a Few experts in our hobby, who would buy a Wagner card raw?
I wouldn't
Anyone in the area may go to the auction, I'm sure it will be interesting & would love to hear a report
Oh yes, there is A reserve on the card
he wants Top $$$$$ or no sale I hear
My prediction, NO SALE

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Posted By: Vincent

I feel for the individual who paid $50,000 for the rights to fully own this "card". Certainly suspicious. The difficulty in getting it authenticated ? Perhaps by the auction date, but for an item of this significance, I'd be willing to wait. So why the hurried sale ? And use of a small, local market auction house? But given that the full owner is a "dealer", I'll cut him alittle less slack, since he should know better. I don't know if the card met the reserve. I'll update this post, if I find out more.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

But I definitely mind that they think the rest of us are stupid too...

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

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Posted By: davidcycle

It is the press that falls for these stories (which is why they are stories). Sometimes a newspaper's knowledge level about T206 Wagners authenticity is on the the level of the most naive eBayer. Makes you wonder if the naivete is similar in other areas of reporting, like legal coverage, the legislature, foreign affairs, science and medicine.

It seems the only people who took seriously the 'blue eyed' Wagner were the press and one or two other rubes. What the press learned is it is the collectors who buy the cards and, irrelevant to what they press reports, if the collectors don't think something is genuine it's not going to sell. Knowledgeable Pre-War baseball card collectors aren't going to pay thousands of dollars for a color Froy Joy Ruth sheet no matter how many specials HBOs have about it-- and the reason for this is that the knowledgeable collectors know that the the color versions are cheapo reprints. HBO specials and Toledo newspaper stories won't make the color sheets any more original.

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Posted By: Brian E.

It looks like the paper states the auction was to occur on Sunday. I wonder how much it sold for.

Brian E.

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Posted By: Rob Dewolf

As someone who works at a newspaper, I cringe when I see stories like this in print, let alone stripped across the top of a section. It would not have been that tough, especially with the Internet, to find an expert in the field who could have explained to the reporter why this card isn't legitimate.

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Posted By: Dave

well if you missed out on this Wagner, you can still get the one on Ebay that someones "granfather" carried in his wallet for years...LOL.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I like the line "he tried to find a dealer to look at the card, only to get the brush off."

Can you tell me one dealer on the face of the earth who would brush off a real Wagner? And I have to admit it's nearly impossible to get that thing authenticated.

I agree with Rob and others that it is shameful for a newspaper to run such a poorly researched story when the truth about the card is so easy to ascertain. A Google search would lead the writer to this board, and that could be accomplished in a few minutes. And it wouldn't take long for him to realize how bogus the card is.

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Posted By: MVSNYC

davidcycle-

you tied your previous record of 11 edits in one post...

please edit it again, so you have a new world's record...

thank you.

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Posted By: TONY

I just sent a email to Mr loew who wrote this joke article

waiting to see if he even bothers to reply as I wanted him to run a followup article chronicling this phony card story

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Posted By: davidcycle

Some questions include:

If you think a card is worth $100,000 and above, why would you sell a 50 percent stake for $50,000?

If you know enough about the card to know it's value, how many exist etc, why would you sell it at obscure Michigan auction unauthenticated?

The co-owner supposedly is a dealer. I understand there are newbies, but any card dealer who thought the card was genuine would know enough to get to submit it to Mastro, REA or the like and not a local flea market auction. Of course offering $10,000 for authentication when PSA charges like $100 makes loads of sense, in particular from a card dealer who can tell you how many Wagners were made. I assume the $10,000 is if you say it's authentic-- if you say it's a reprint, you get nothing.

The bit about dealers brushing him and his genuine Wagner off is indeed humorous.

Actually, I think the quote about how they aren't going to have the card authenticated in time for the auction is funny. With a million dollar piece of memorabilia, I think you can delay the auction or save it for the next auction cycle. If Natalie Portman is coming to dinner, you put the lasagna back in the oven if she calls to say she will fifteen minutes late. You don't say, "Tough luck chick. Dinner starts a 6 sharp."

If you need to get an item authenticated (which means you don't know how to determine if it's authentic) and the item has not been authenticated (which means you don't know if it's authentic), how can you auction it? For a licensed auction house and a $1 million item, is this legal? And, of course, for a reputable licensed auction house, why would they even offer a $1 million item that they don't know is authentic and hasn't been authenticated by outside source? Beyond preservation of one's reputation, it would be financial suicide to be taking $1 million dollar items on consignment where you don't know if they are genuine.

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Posted By: Eric B

Hey guys,

Can you provide a link or picture or who the "board expert" is on fake Wagners like this one. I saw the MSN piece but it only briefly showed the card and I am not an expert (although I knew the back looked fishy). One of the reporters may be researching the story from the other side.

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Posted By: davidcycle

http://www.cycleback.com/baseballcards

The simple answer is, if the owners think it's real, they should get it authenticated by PSA or SGC or contact a major auction house like Mastro Auctions, Robert Edward Auctions or Sotheby's. That simple. Few collectors in the hobby would even consider paying $100,000 or more a Wagner not slabbed by PSA, SGC or GAI, and none of the big time auction houses even offer ungraded Wagners. What the newspaper reporter may not have realized is that, while there are perhaps 70 genuine Wagners and these are financially valuable, there are perhaps 30,000 reprints and fakes that are worth perhaps 20 cents each. Even if you don't have a clue how to judge the authenticity of the card, you can figure out on your calculator the mathematical odds that a randomly pictured ungraded Wagner is genuine and worth riches(70 divided by 30,000). This should explain why the above mentioned collectors don't ever consider writing a $100,000+ on all those ungraded Wagners on eBay and 'discovered' in houses and attics and flea markets by people they've never met. When a collector sees 500 Wagners offered for sale in a month when he knows there are fewer than 100 Wagners in existence, you can see why the collector gets a jaded eye to each newly 'discovered' Wagner being offered for sale ungraded and unauthenticated. A particular sale may be flashy new stuff to a newspaper reporter who doesn't collect and is like a newborn baby to the subject, but the collectors in the hobby (the folks who buy the Wagners, realize) saw the other 499 offered before it, each accompanied by a story no better or worse than the one the reporter fixates on-- discovered in attic, grandpa's safety deposit box, given to by great uncle, found in wall, etc. In fact, some collectors will wonder why a reporter picked for story a particular ungraded Wagner sale, when there were the 499 others similar to it. Did the reporter pull a piece of paper from a hat, throw a dart?

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Posted By: Eric B

I'm sure the story was picked up by an editor and given to a reporter to run with for the next day's edition since it involved a local collector. And several papers ran similar stories.

But alledgedly the collector was really trying to dupe an unsuspecting person. First by coming up with the fake and then saying it was worth millions when a creased example would be around $200K. I guess the buyer would be happy if it only went to $150K.

What I really would like to know is if the collector was in on the alledged scam or not. Maybe the dealer was the one who made out and the collector was just greedy and couldn't see the forest because of the trees.

Anyway, David, that's a great site for fakes in general but what I think would be better is a picture of the fake alongside a real one.

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Posted By: davidcycle

Actually, as T206 Wagner real and fake sales are regularly in the news, I am planning on having a long article about the card including pics and specific details.

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Posted By: MW

<< Makes you wonder if the naivete is similar in other areas of reporting, like legal coverage, the legislature, foreign affairs, science and medicine. >>

David,

Good point.

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Posted By: Marc

Personally, I'm sick of these people who are attempting to cheat the hobby. At the very least, legal reproductions of these cards should be outlawed to HELP fight this growing problem.

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Posted By: davidcycle

The funny thing is that far from investigating anything, these types of stories promote the activity. This reporter unquestioningly repeats what the sellers told him, then tells readers where to go to place bids. Past high sales and golden valuations are peppered throughout. Tell me the difference between this article and an ad.

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Posted By: mabjae

The latest from the Web site of WILX-TV 10:

Sports experts from around the country have been emailing us after watching our broadcast of the Honus Wagner card found by a local man.
"In case nobody else has told you, that card is a fake and a poor one at that," said Eric Beachley of Virginia. " Any advanced collector would know that the T206 card of Wagner has either a Sovereign back or a Piedmont 150 back. This common 1970's reprint had a Piedmont 350-460 back."
Ray Lumbert completed a purchase of the card last week for $50,000 is cash and sports memorabilia. He tells us he bought it from a man who found it in a kitchen ceiling last spring.
The card went up for auction on Sunday in Holt but did not sell. Employees of the auction company A-OK auctioneers would not tell us how many bids it received and how much they were for.
Lumbert is still trying to have the card examined for authenticity. he has contacted auction houses in both New York and Los Angeles.

As someone who works for Gannett, the parent company of that paper, I am ashamed that that story saw the light of day. It looks like this was just slapped together: 1 source, repeating the word "card" in the headline and the deck, ending the headline with the word "of", "selling" and "auctioning" do not have the same meaning - this is just an awful story.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I'll have to go through my Sovereign backs inventory and see if I have any Wagners.

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Posted By: Eric B

Dammit. I know it's Sweet Caporal but wasn't paying attention to what I was writing once I started with the "S". But I was referring the reporter to this Board for some experts anyway since I wasn't qualified.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Eric- Piedmont 150's are pretty rare also. There are maybe two known.

Virtually every genuine Wagner has a Sweet Caporal 150 back.

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Posted By: Eric B

I knew there weren't many. But they changed it on the website a couple minutes ago.

Do I still lose my "Sports expert" title?

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Posted By: dan mckee

I would by a raw Wagner that I could hold first before I would by a graded one from any grading service.

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Posted By: leon

I am not even registered with A-OK Auctions.....crap....

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Posted By: davidcycle

So says the tv report: "The card went up for auction on Sunday ... Lumbert is still trying to have the card examined for authenticity." Doesn't a reporter detect a problem in this chronology? The auction is over and the owner has yet to find someone to tell him if it's authentic. Even if you've never collected, wouldn't you think it would be normal procedure to have something examined for authenticity before rather than after the auction?

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Posted By: Rob Dewolf

I'll qualify this by saying that as a former member of the print media, I'm biased, but in my opinion local television is to news reporting what Coach's Corner is to autographed memorabilia.