Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro
 

https://youtu.be/Omp0P5kJ9Cs?si=qh--N2f3hoLvhui5

Wagner discussion, I am told, at 1:06

I have to admit, I went straight to 1:06. It's interesting.

The Wagner is sheet cut. It was never better than an AUTH. It should be in an AUTH now because it's sheet cut, not because it was subsequently trimmed. The focus of this story has been wrong all along IMO.

Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro
 

Exactly.

And PSA, complicit in the skulduggery from the word go - knew it was sheet cut and gave it an 8 anyway.

What a fine opening chapter for the attitudes on grading and tone of things we find today.


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Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro
 

Thanks for posting this, Peter. It was entertaining to say the least.

An actual quote from later in the video: “If you cannot detect the alteration, okay, in any way, shape, or form, is it altered?”

Great share.

I will watch over the week and I am sure I will report back on my thoughts. :)

is it known where the sheet came from before the Wagner card was cut out of it?

How similar to cutting out a particular card from a 1960's Bazooka panel - getting a number grade.

I presume because the Bazooka panel was meant to be hand cut and the T206 was not.

Aren’t most cards sheet cut? The argument is who cut it, no?

What if it was cut using the same cutters as the day it was printed only 90yrs later?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

It was a strip as opposed to a sheet, and someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Long Island?

IIRC, I have heard different things, one being Long Island, one being that Alan Ray or maybe his father bought it at some obscure venue in Florida.

For a hobby history board (or at least how we are sometimes) please don't skip to the 1 hour 6 minute point. Listen to the whole first hour because there is a TON of hobby history talked about by a person with first hand experience.

In fact, at some point I'd love to hear more about Bill's adventures at the early 1970s shows before any of us really knew about the hobby.

In other words, listen to the whole darned interview.

Rich

Yes, if it's cut by the factory and issued as a single that is different from an individual cutting it from a sheet or strip. You can obviously do a Socratic method on it, but the hobby distinguishes.

Yes, it is. Stupid point. Next question?

Listening now, thanks for posting the link

Yeah, the common understanding seems to be that Mastro took a lower grade card and trimmed it into a higher grade one, and PSA missed or overlooked the trimming. Thus, all the emphasis has been on the trimming. Not really accurate.

I feel the same. His recollections mirror what I remember during the early 1980s and more importantly, what other collecting folks before that have said.

Yes.
There is no alternate reality in my world.
And if a card is altered and no one detects it, it's still altered. And I fully understand that is not the way it is in the hobby for many, if not most.

Bob Sevchuk
 

The Wagner card was trimmed in the back room of a card shop owned by Bob Sevchuck, located on Jerusalem Avenue in Hicksville, Long Island. I used to go there frequently and talk to Bob, who was very knowledgeable about baseball cards. Unfortunately, the Wagner card did not come up.

Right, but I think the question is the origin of the strip from which it was cut?

I enjoyed listening to the program--I stated selling cards in 1977-78--but I met Mastro years ago, we were not buddies--but I knew him--but listening to him, I enjoyed it and his love for the hobby--The other guy drove me crazy budding in all the time--I really wanted to hear Mastro with his story. Thanks for the listing Peter.

Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro
 

Right.

The problem seems to be in Mastro’s insistence that he didn’t hide it (the fact it was cut) from anyone, vs. the stories that started circulating after Gretzky and McNall bought the card and PSA graded it.

You can kind of see Mastro’s side of the story though. At the time he cut it from the sheet or the “oblong football” of a card he bought, there were no grading companies. Even after PSA graded the card in 1992 or whenever, there still was not this widespread focus on the deceptive practice of trimming, what a certain type of card should or should not measure to up to 1/72 of an inch - and things like that. Mastro likely wasn’t asked much about the circumstances in which he acquired the card and what he did with it before selling it to Jim Copeland in the late 80’s. There was not this cloud of eternal suspicion over things like that, as we have today with just about anything in a slab that is vintage that appears perfect or near perfect to the naked eye.


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So what you are saying is that there just may be no way to know whether or not many cards are altered. Even if we suspect they aren’t, and reside in numbered PSA slabs.


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Agreed.

I did, and it was fantastic. I had been looking forward to some type of tell-all by Mastro including that story for some time.


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Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro
 

+1

Yeah, the guy who conducted the interview was tripping over himself interrupting and making irrelevant comments about his own experiences. I wished for a large part of the middle section that he would just shut up.

But all in all, worth listening to for Bill’s perspective. If that guy made it happen, then more power to him.


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Every thread needs a card
https://www.t206resource.com/Wagner-Gallery.html

It aint a tree... Unfortunately, when Mastro farted this one out, everyone has to smell it, and this scent will linger as long as that card is in an 8 holder.


I guess we could look at it that the "original" cut (per Bill) is that it looked like a football. So that was the "original" cut. When it was cut again, wouldn't that be an alteration to the "original" cut? :p

It may have been more widely accepted and not considered fraud if there was full disclosure from the beginning, however that would have opened up all cards that are trimmed to have a numeric grade (which seems to be where this hobby is, anyway).

That is Brian Gray being Brian Gray. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sort of an unlikely interviewer, no? A guy firmly in the world of shiny stuff.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...y-leaves-leaf/

I have never heard of that guy. But he mentions being chummy with Dr. Jim, and thus I assume he knows Rich as well.

I appreciate that he took the time to put that interview together.


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Yes we know each other fairly well.

Mastro
 

Growing up in Chicago, as a collector got to know Bill and his workers as I was over to his office many times and they also stopped by my house several times back then.

Employing simple logic: "If a card is trimmed it is trimmed." "If a card is trimmed..." is self-answering.

So has this card smashing been going on for a long time or recent phenomenon?

What do you mean by "card smashing"? Are you referring to all the discussion about how the very first card graded by PSA was subjectively given a NUMERICAL grade?

If so, then the observation is that you've somehow missed out on MANY threads that regurgitate the disgust at PSA for not doing what they were set out to do in the first place. TPGs are supposed to provide an honest unbiased opinion about the condition of a card that's to be slabbed.

The very first card that PSA encapsulated is a fraud. PSA has rejected MANY cards as being altered and has not provided numerical grades to what they determine is a trimmed card.

TPGs are supposed to protect the collecting public from these shams by not encapsulating trimmed cards with NUMERICAL grades. For example, look at the price of a PSA8 T206 common and then look at the price of a trimmed (nice looking) PSA-A graded T206 common. Not to mention a T206 Wagner.

This "hobby" has boiled down to being driven by $$$ based on these grades. Soooooo... go back to the beginning of this semi-rant and you should begin to understand this not a recent phenomenon. The topic of so many trimmed encapsulated cards is also not a new phenomenon.

I believe he was referring to the discussion in the video about pressing cards to make them oversized so they can be trimmed without measuring small.

Got it! It was about literal card smashing and not a metaphorical reference to incident bashing.

Yes, card smashing/pressing has been around for a long time. So many ways to "improve" the appearance of a card without actually cutting it for sharp corners.

I just got through the entire interview. It was very interesting to hear about the condition of the Wagner when he bought it, the other cards involved and of course the cutting with the paper cutter. Since I am about the same age as Mastro, his talking about his early years buying packs brought back great memories. I feel very fortunate to have lived during that time period.

Mastro interview
 

Three years ago, in September of 2021, Rick Probstein did an long interview with Mastro that is still available on utube. I forget the details, but it might be interesting to see the extent to which Mastro has stuck to his stories.

You wonder what might have happened if Mastro had decided to take other major players in the hobby down with him, rather than keeping mum.

Contrary to my expectations, I actually really enjoyed listening to Mastro. I would love to grab a beer with him some day and listen to his stories.

I do not know who Brian Gray is, but he was hard for me to listen to. He consitently talked over Mastro. It seemed as though he was interviewing himself half of the time. His name dropping and bragging really spoiled what could have been an epic interview.

Or at least the hobby wishes to distinguish. The fundamental problem though is that the hobby in fact cannot distinguish.

+1

Every time Mastro started to elaborate or say something interesting, he was abruptly cut off and/or redirected. A good interviewer lets the interviewee do 80% of the talking. This was the exact opposite. Difficult to sit through it and I would have loved to hear more from Bill about how he grew Mastro Auctions into the "empire" it once was.

I watched from beginning to end and really enjoyed the back and forth dialogue. It was less an interview and more a lively conversation between two old hobby friends-felt like I was a fly on the wall for a really epic conversation between two industry titans, unique in their own way and experiences.

+1

I used to be a reporter. It's closer to 95%, unless the interviewee won't say anything or gives you one word answers, which is not a problem you have with Bill Mastro. I understand that Brian is not a reporter, but he was way too much of an "agree-er" and explainer (and almost an outright apologist), for Mastro, rather then just letting him talk. That whole fawning part about wanting Mastro in the Hall of Fame was painful to listen to. Mastro didn't need that. He did fine on his own, and I came away with more respect for him. I do think the landscape was very different back then before grading companies came into play, and there emerged such a focus on pristine unaltered cards. I think back then there was more of a focus on present appearance than on provenance and original condition. And he's right that most of the legendary paintings in museums have been restored and touched-up in some way. I actually believe that Mastro may not have had devious intent from the beginning. But he should probably have spoken up at some earlier point. I am also very curious whether the guy who bought it from Mastro for $100,000 asked him if it had been altered in any way, and if so, how did Mastro respond. That is a question Brian should have asked. Because that goes to the heart of his culpability, perhaps more than the actual act of cutting the card. But I did find myself liking Mastro. We are all imperfect.

Paul, respectfully, read his indictment. He committed every type of fraud known to the hobby and robbed his friends. He then got caught, cooperated against his co-conspirator/friends and paid none of his victims back (including his victim/friends) unless he got sued and was forced to cough some up. He's just another criminal in the hobby, just on a much higher level. The two years he received in prison was a gift, it should have been much more.

Sure. I think some trimming can't be detected. But what I was saying is, it's still trimmed.
For the record, Bill Hughes, who actually graded the card, said it was an 8 to him and he didn't know a backstory. That's what he's told me.
I enjoyed the interview. Thanks for posting it, Peter.

I don't disagree. I just think it's hard to analyze the thought process by which we acknowledge that an item might be altered, but in some cases have zero ability to prove it.

The discrepancies between this interview and some of what has come to be the accepted lore of the card (i.e., the 30-for-30 short "Holy Grail", that ESPN did with Keith Olbermann and others a decade or so ago...) is that here you have Mastro saying it's "one of the larger" Wagners that exists. And everyone in the older interviews are saying it's short, up to 1/16 short, and that's how they knew it was sheet cut or trimmed and not factory.

Which is true?

Can't they both be true? Mastro claimed in the interview to not have touched the top and bottom borders. According to him, whoever cut it from the sheet cut it that size, but left massive borders on the left and right, which he then trimmed. So the card could be short, and still have wide borders on the sides.

Leon, as we've discussed, at least according to O'Keeffe, he said he knew it was sheet cut/trimmed.

I still don't understand the emphasis in the popular lore on the trimming as opposed to it being sheet/strip cut. It was never worthy of a number grade.

I am only stating what Bill told me told about 2-3? yrs ago.

As for Okeefe, he completely misquoted Chris Ivy on purpose, in an article concerning me selling my collection, by putting a period (or comma, I forget) in a sentence, changing the meaning. Before that, I had no issue with him. After that, I had no use for him or his reporting.

As a former journalist — I agree in full. With something like this, you ask a question and get out of the way. Wayyy too much talking over the person everyone is here to see.

Mastro
 

So painful to watch... Bill was in a mood to just tell stories about stuff we all wanted to know about and I found myself screaming at the screen to "shut up!!" over and over again.. I will give him credit for getting the interview though.

Brian Gray is hands down my favorite person to listen to in the hobby. He always gives great interviews and has wealth of insight. This is the first time I've seen him as the one conducting the interview though, rather than the other way around. He always seems to have his finger on the pulse.

I suppose that's true. Neither Mastro or Olbermann / O'Keefe in that other thing I referred to said specifically how it was either too big or too small (horizontal v. vertical, or both). The ESPN video seemed to insinuate it wasn't wide enough, but that may have just been my perception.

The thing I had not questioned really before watching this new Mastro interview, was how many people were really concerned about the size of cards the way we are now in the late 80's and early 90's? I was a kid in the hobby then, but was collecting "old" (the term vintage was not yet really applied to cards then) cards voraciously, and I can tell you that would not have been a question I would have thought to ask in 1990. Unless the card just obviously presented cut or small. I hear that and think well, probably Jim Copeland never asked Mastro anything like that. Maybe Sotheby's didn't either - hell, probably. They didn't know anything about cards.

That's exactly what I was screaming multiple times listening to it in my car yesterday.

Surprised no one brought up Brian's quick jab at auction houses in specific states when it comes to houses bidding against customers.

https://youtu.be/Omp0P5kJ9Cs?si=LDJLz_WIZ1BYNHol&t=2754

Others such as Dave also brought this up.

My apologies for my ignorance, but given his criminal behavior I will not watch the interview.

Wasn't part of Bill's sentencing is that he is forever prohibited from engaging in the sport's card industry either as a dealer and auctioneer?

I came away mostly wanting to hear more about the early days of hobby types / sets becoming "discovered" or "popularized", what that was like to uncover these rare regional sets and some of the early collectors who gave them their attention and deemed them valuable. so much hobby knowledge today is just accepted without learning much of the origins and how things came to be favored or desirable.

I also want to see the collection of John Ramirez (sp?), who Mastro said has everything and has been collecting forever.

Agreed, TJ. I had a weird experience with Iconic Auctions recently where there was a bid against me on a Babe Ruth cut auto in or right before extended, so it looked to me like I lost as the underbidder. Then they contacted me in the morning saying that I could purchase it for my high (under)bid, because the seller decided that they would lower the reserve. I didn't see anything on the listing about it having a reserve and when I inquired more, they dodged my questions and just pressed to know if I'd buy it or not. I wonder if Arizona is one of these states Brian was referring to where AH's can be a fake bidder with up to the reserve... which I, of course, did not know about and do not like.

"The T206-series Wagner card is considered one of the world’s most expensive trading cards. Mastro admitted in the plea agreement that he cut the card’s side borders, and then concealed this information when he sold the card in 1987. Mastro again failed to disclose his alteration even after participating in subsequent auctions of the card in 1991 and 2000. The sale in 2000 produced a purchase price of more than $1 million, according to the plea agreement. Mastro also failed to disclose that he cut the Wagner card again in 1992, even though he was aware that the card had been submitted to become the first baseball card assigned a grade based on the condition of the card."

cut from here the below link seems to answer your question:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr...l-bidding-scam

Here is an excerpt from the actual indictment. As evidenced by a thread last year, there is a lot of misunderstanding of this proceeding and the role of the Wagner. Bottom line, people who claim it had NOTHING to do with the case are flat out wrong, but at the same time, it certainly was not the focus of it. The focus was clearly shill bidding.

11. It was further part of the scheme that in marketing materials distributed
on behalf of Mastro Auctions, which were intended to portray Mastro Auctions to
potential bidders and consignors as a premier seller of valuable items for which a
strong market existed, defendant MASTRO represented that Mastro Auctions had sold
the most expensive baseball card in the world, a Honus Wagner T-206 card. In making
this representation, however, defendant MASTRO knowingly omitted the material fact
that defendant MASTRO had altered the baseball card by cutting the sides of the card
in a manner that, if disclosed, would have significantly reduced the value of the card.

Ray may have been lying for some reason, but he is the only actual primary source I have ever seen able to recount the origin. His testimony appears to be the only actual evidence. I have been told there is some evidence of the Long Island origin but nobody is able to produce it when questioned about what it is. So strange.


Mastro was obviously guilty of very serious criminal fraud. Imperfect is putting it far too lightly. But criminal fraud is not seen as a big deal in this hobby for some reason ($$$), so I guess that is not a big problem. What's wrong with having auctions and auction houses run by convicted fraudsters? Nothing!


The 'trimming' is kind of irrelevant, since it was cut by hand from a "sheet" (deductively, almost certainly not an actual sheet, perhaps a panel or strip). Its only added value is that the card was effectively cut illegitimately twice and PSA still pretends it's an 8, adding to the comic absurdity of their money-printing claim to this day. If a corporation says up is down, this hobby will decide that up is close enough to down that it is fine as long as money can be made.


A card that is altered in reality is... altered, independent of any single person's knowledge of said alteration. Not being caught doing something does not mean that thing did not in actual objective reality ever happen or it somehow does not count.


The real tragedy of the saga is that possibly the only piece of uncut material from the set production runs to survive to modernity was destroyed without any documentation of the layout, size, what was on it, etc. There are only a handful of uncut T strips/sheets/panels that anyone can show (mostly Obak), and none for T206. Some other T sheets we know survived to modernity have been destroyed, like the T25 sheet and the T204 sheet.

Where did Ray discuss the origin? I know I have read this but cannot now recall except to vaguely remember it was something about Florida.

Was Brian somehow, someway unaware that much of Bill’s criminal behavior running Mastro Auctions was his creation of fake accounts to run up his customers’ bids while knowing what their ceiling bids were? And his telling Mastro employees to secretly hit lots over and over to run up the prices, creating hidden reserves?

I feel like I’ve just taken crazy pills and somehow no one recalls who and what Bill Mastro is.

Off memory - Ray's version of events is recounted in O'Keefe's book, who I believe he spoke to for an article or two from a couple years before the book. I believe there are other places it's been, but I'm not sure when it first appeared as it was probably before my time. I'm pretty sure we dived into Ray and the card in the thread here a couple years ago.

As I recall the details (I'm not home, I can't go through my archive right now), the Florida origin was stated by Ray to be from a flea market. The sheet was bought at the flea market for an unstated pittance, and then brought up north where the cutting and selling (1985) happened via Ray. Ray, of course, is probably the only person who would really have any real information on the origin. I would never assume people are honest, but there's no other evidence and nothing that contradicts.

The claims from Long Island have been made by multiple people. None have ever been able to provide a shred of evidence or real information beyond just insisting they are right because they are.

NY is closer to the production facility (we do not actually know, despite many claims to the contrary, for a certain fact which facility actually printed T206 - probably it was multiple, and not all of them may have been direct on paper facilities of the ALC), but in the course of 70 something years items move around. Plenty of New Yorkers have retired to Florida and brought their possessions with them. I have found 1910 T card sheets (actually a series of panels in two sheets for two different sets) and traced them to a NY origin, but things can be found in other places too and be legitimate. I don't see any problem with a sheet popping up in Florida.

In this 2001 piece by O'Keeffe, Ray refused to say where he got it. Also note Mastro's adamant denial.

https://www.t206museum.com/page/periodical_19.html

I do not have a copy of O’Keefe’s book anymore, I recycled mine. The Florida speculation/story is included and mentioned in some articles in promotion of the book you can pull online if you want. I doubt I can trace it to the first appearance, and I doubt O’Keefe was the first claimant as I’ve heard this since the late 90’s.

The Long Island claimant was asked for evidence they claimed to posses over and over on this board and refused to ever divulge it. This was a lie, it possibly is from NY (it probably was in 1909!) but it isn’t because of this claim.

I have no clue what the actual truth is, and nobody has ever given anything to prove it. I have no reason to doubt the long standing story especially, nor to argue that it is the truth. I don’t know where it is actually from, we probably never really will at this remove. That’s the point, that we lost a lot of history that we aren’t likely to be able to find anywhere else because this unique item of immense value to research was cut up and ruined for some bucks, and no information preserved. It is quite unfortunate for us all.

I think this is the only panel of T206 cards I have ever seen. But this panel appears to be a proof, not from a production sheet.

This panel is exactly why I phrased it as production. This is a very strange piece, I have never seen anything like it among the other uncut T card material available to us in other non-baseball sets. The few pre-production proofing sheets I own or have seen of ATC T cards are all on normal stock the same or (or indistinguishably similar) to the production cards. Same for solitary 'proof' cards that have come down to us.

If this wasn't apparently found in Wagners estate, I'd have a lot of doubts about it. To my eyes this piece is way more interesting and cool than the PSA 8 Wagner.

I would agree Greg. This panel is very odd. Have you ever seen any T205 uncut sheets or panels?

I wish! I love the gold borders.

For baseball there are a few Obak sheets and panels, but I believe this set was produced by an unrelated lithographer on the west coast. American Lithography was a lot more circumspect than the ATC was about a monopoly. A number of print shops are working with ALC and doing things that make no sense (one series of records I found in a card related court case has the ALC outsourcing a small project to 2 different 'independent' firms) if they didn't own a number of their 'competitors'. The documents suggest to me that the ALC didn't put on paper its ownership of firms like Brett Lithography that produced a number of the T card sets, but that in actual practice these firms were acting as subsidiaries.


I will edit this list if I am forgetting any, but I believe these are our surviving T sheets of the 1909-1912 ATC project. Finding even one panel or sheet of east coast printed T cards the same size as T205/6 could be very helpful.

Small Size Proof sheets, testing only a handful of cards, focused on colors and alignment and clearly not the size that would have been used for mass production:
T107
T62 (at least 2 different)
T51


Full size sheets or nearly full size sheets:
T212 Obaks

T25 - Auctioned and then cut up into strips and/or singles. (I have 2 strips of it).

T220 Silver - Proof cards cut into 8 panels long ago before 'discovery'. (I have 23 of the 24 surviving fragments).

E229 - cut into panels before discovery, from the same find as the T220 set. Candy set, but at least 1 of its backs is a licorice owned by the ATC and it was done by the same printers at the same place at the same time as T cards, probably using the same contracts, so I would bucket this as relevant, unlike the E90 sheets or the E93 sheet). These are probably proof cards, but there are no changes I have noticed. (I own most but not all of the panels).

T204 Ramly - cut up into singles that SGC slabbed, no picture or documentation was ever shown publicly (as far I am aware, I am no Ramly expert). These are probably not helpful to ATC card sheets.

T206 Panel - Cut up by Mastro in 1985. The presence of a single Wagner and Plank very strongly suggests this was not a "sheet" in the full sense, but a panel of some sort


The Wagner strip from his estate really doesn't fit with any. I would love to handle it raw and examine, but that ain't ever happening.


We would know a lot more than we do now about the ATC card project if we could find even a few sheets of random sets. That there are so few from any of the dozens of ATC sets and that some of those very few that did survive were not even documented before being destroyed saddens me. A lot of knowledge was lost, slowing research but perhaps preventing us from ever getting that information elsewhere. There may not be another sheet to discover and learn from, and we will forever be stuck squinting at miscuts and trying to deduce which cuts went with what sheet layout and its overall size etc.

When I first read Brian's comment, I thought his reaction was "odd" or a little "off base." I was able to watch 1:25 and then I had to turn it off. I feel like I need a shower. That was, frankly, disgusting not only in terms of what they were celebrating and normalizing, but in terms of things they never even addressed (conveniently). Frankly, at the end of 85 minutes, I have far less respect for "the interviewer" than I do for Mastro.

Its a real god damn shame that professionalism and expertise have gone by the wayside and any clown with a platform can host with the same weight and credentials as someone who.......knows what they're doing. That was an intense disservice to the entire industry.

I feel that way about several in the hobby. On the flip side I heard Bill sent out some nice gift baskets to those that said good things about him before he done his time.