Honus Wagner T206
 

I came across this card for sale. Any chance it's real?

Burn the rest of it, or you could send it to PRO grading.

Wow!
 

Ouch.....yeah,PRO may give it a 7.............

If you don't mind me asking - what gives it away as not real? A few tips can keep me from wasting time with other potential purchasing considerations in the future.

All the printdots give it away to me, but I am no expert but 100% sure it is fake.

I'm also no expert,but there's something not right about the lines on the back of the card in the Piedmont design.......maybe it's the scan-but I doubt it.

I did not know if the "dot matrix" look was due to the printer itself or due to the texture in the paper. I'm guessing the real cards did not have this paper texture. I have not seen a real one in person, or very close up for that matter online.

The funny thing is when you see a mysterious ungraded Honus suddenly appear for sale(usually a fake,of course)it seems as though it's always mangled ,burnt,half torn,etc.............

You have a much better chance of fathering Angelina Jolies next child than coming accross an unknown Honus but either is possible if you got extremely lucky.

It's a Wagner. Not being mean, but seriously.

Someday I hope to do both! :D

If you have to ask, then it isn't a real Wagner. Period.

You have a better chance of winning the lottery than coming across an authentic one.

Other red flags include:

-No box around the image
-The dot matrix pattern
-The fact that it is absolutely charred (intent to deceive)

I would recommend that you hold/own a few authentic and cheap T206 cards before you venture into Big 4 territory.

I have always believed that if you don't ask, you will never know.

With that being said. I understand that there are only two main Wagner backs. - Piedmont and Sweet Caporal. Is it there are are truly only two backs, or only two known types of backs?

If there are only two types of backs, why would someone fake a Wagner card with a style of back that it can't possibly have? I have seen a Wagner card with a Sovereign back, and one with a Drum back. I guess people will do anything to attempt to make money.

Just like baseball bats and the players that used them, do any official records exist for which cards were printed with which backs? Just curious...

Thanks again for all of your input!

One thing I always look at is the gap between the "G" on the uniform and the border. This clown knew this and burnt the card in that spot to cover up the easiest way to see a fake. He didnt know you can also tell it is a cropped photo because the thin black line around the photo is missing too.

Caption is not bold enough, but the font style looks fairly good for a reprint.

If you've never.....
 

touched or held a REAL T206, why would you start with a Wagner? That's like beginning driving with a Bentley. You need to search ebay for a low grade PSA1-2 T206 card, buy it, crack it out and touch it and figure out the paper quality, look at the printing, etc. For $20-$30, that's a great investment. If you're looking to score by buying a $200 T206 Wagner that may be real, then you'll be ripped off every time. While you can generally tell by looking if a T206 is real or not in a scan from having touched and felt a number of them, it's still never a 100% surety unless you have the card in front of you and get a change to really check it out.

As Dennis Miller used to say, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.....

Resurrecting an old thread (the last post before this one is almost ten months old) to ask if there's any kind of census identifying the owners/locations of all known T206 Wagners. With such an important card, that would go a long way towards keeping track of the real ones.

Cards that are already "slabbed" can be identified by the unique serial number on their labels... though I wonder if such T206 Wagners have been cracked out of their "slab" for a hopeful upgrade.

Frank, i was thinking the font was the giveaway fro me. As far as I know the first letter is a different size then the rest and these ones all look the same..

Burning is usually an indication as well as it is usually done to make it look old.

It's a shame that people don't take better care of their reprints.:)

Maybe it can be restored into a FRANKENWAGNER!

wag
 

yes, a Frankenwagner!!!
well put!

best,
barry

It survived the fire test, it's real. :)

Gary - one of the major auction houses in the past year (Legendary?) had a section in their catalog which traced the ownership of the best condition T206 Wagners and where they are now, much to the dismay of a few of the current owners.

Gary,

As Matt alluded to, many of the people who currently own T206 Wagners would prefer that everyone in the world NOT know about their ownership.

It was at the 2008 Net54 dinner in Chicago that an auction house talked about all the different Wagners. I believe a few of those Wagners he was referring to belonged to guys who were sitting in the room. :D:D:D:D:D

correct
 

This is correct. Doug Allen, with Legendary, went over ownership of many/most of the top Wagners in the hobby, while giving a speech at the Net54 dinner in 2008. He had permission and approval of most of the owners. Many of the owners were in the room at the time. Except for that litttle bit of uncomfortable feeling (at least one owner wasn't happy about the "surprise" outing) it was a really nice speech.

Here is a link to the list. (The "Holy Grail" - An Explanation of Hierarchy)

http://legendaryauctions.com/LotDetail.aspx?lotid=86978

Thanks Aaron - that is what I was referring to.

Seeing the reference to the Burdick Wagner at the Met made me think- has any Burdick card from the Met collection been removed from the albums, and the paste attempted to be removed? I'm curious if the museum or anyone has attempted this with any of the Burdick cards at the Met.

Most of the people who work in the department that houses the Burdick collection care little about it. If anything, the times I visited there it appeared that they found the presence of the collection a nuisance. So many people asked to see it that it began to take up a lot of their time. So I doubt they care one way or the other whether the cards are pasted or not. And taking them out of the album would be a huge effort, and they may not even be allowed to do so. It's possible the collection has to remain the way Burdick left it.

That said, I don't know much about their temporary exhibits. When they put part of the collection up for public viewing, do they mount whole pages onto the walls? I am much less familiar with these displays than the collection itself.

I have been doing a little research on Burdicks collection as I hope to see it the next time I visit my father who lives in Chelsea. In an article by George Vrechek, he states that cards have been removed for safekeeping. Some have also been removed for matting :( . The Wagner and Plank, along with some R300s, have shared this fate. Notations have been left in their place as to why they are not there.

If they ever cared about the collection at all, I hope it was during the removal process.

Can anyone give me more information about the 3 Wagner's that "emerged from a non-collector (August Jacobs)" according to the Legendary Auction link above? Or point me in the direction of where I could find this story?