1971: Mastro gets his Plank
 

In the June 1971 The Trader Speaks (from which I just posted an article about Crawford Foxwell's convention), editor Dan Dischley auctioned off a T206 Plank with a minimum bid of $150. The following month in the July issue, he announced that Bill Mastro had won it for $320. Mastro was 18 years old at the time. I'm not sure how close he was to the set at that point, but the following year he bought a Wagner for a then-record $1500 to complete his set. (See the profile of him from the January 1973 TTS in this thread: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=217776.)

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Bill Mastro is a thief and an open sore on this hobby. I would rather pour Frank's red hot on an open cut than read a history lesson on him. Other than that, thanks for posting.

Seems a little excessive. I appreciate Dave posting these pages from old hobby publications.

Nothing against posting hobby history, maybe choose a different article. I know he posts a lot of historical articles, which is great, but cmon.

Jeez, I'm sorry that you're offended by this, Jason. I saw a T206 Plank auction from 1971 with a realized price, and thought it would be of interest. The fact that Mastro was the buyer is not really the main point, though it's kind of interesting because he was a major hobby figure at the time at such a young age. I've posted several other articles by or about Mastro from that period, and the comments have mainly been from people wondering how that kid with such a great collection, and an apparent passion for the cards, went so wrong later on. I think it's a legitimate thing to wonder about, but you don't have to read the articles if you don't want to.

Thanks for sharing, I for one am interested in all aspects in the history of our hobby even if it does involve someone like Mastro. Makes one wonder what ever became of this Plank card? Did he "clean" this one up and sell it for a massive profit later on down the line?


Great stuff as always and thanks for sharing!

Scott

Agreed. I don't think anyone on this board would support what Mastro did, but this article is a part of the history of our hobby and is interesting and informative.

1971: Mastro Gets His Plank

2015: Mastro Walks The Plank

hahahahahaha

2017/18 Mastro auctions a Plank.

I miss publications like these. I know they'll never come this way again, but it was an interesting time. I kind of got in at the rear end of that era.

Maybe I see it from a different view. I have never known Mastro to be a good guy, or someone who helps others, or someone who just made a bad choice. He has always been a d-bag who is a self-centered, egotistical, asshole who enjoys his flock of followers. More reveling about his greatness makes me want to vomit. It reminds me of the people who would stand around this guys booth or follow him around he show back in the day validating his celebrity status.

DAVID KATHMAN---

I for one am very grateful to you for posting this baseball card history research document. It's fascinating to me.

For many years, Bill Mastro was one of our hobby's elite collectors, developing an encyclopedia knowledge of baseball cards. He turned auctioneer in 1995, and shared some of that encyclopedic knowledge in the many pages of his first-rate cutting edge technology auction catalogs. Yeah, we all know what eventually occurred. I in no way am minimizing what he did to our hobby. But honestly, to discredit everything he did is illogical, bordering on idiotic.

---DON'T YOU DARE STOP PRESENTING THESE TYPES OF CARD COLLECTING DOCUMENTS TO US, DAVID. YOU WILL NEVER PLEASE EVERYBODY. THERE'S MORE THAN A FEW OF US THAT LOVE THIS KIND OF STUFF. MANY WON'T SAY SO, BUT I WILL, AND DO SAY SO!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANKS, BRO!:D ---Brian Powell

What on earth are you talking about? Who is "reveling about his greatness"??? I think everybody here recognizes that Mastro is a d-bag; I certainly do, but I'm also interested in how he got to where he is now, and to what extent he was always sleazy. (A considerable extent, I think, though his sleaziness really came to the forefront when the money involved in the hobby ballooned.) And as others have pointed out, Mastro was a significant figure in the hobby starting in the early 1970s, and if you're interested in the history of the hobby (as I am) it doesn't make sense to just ignore what he did back then, or refuse to discuss it just because he's a sleazy guy who's now in jail.

Thanks for the Post, I enjoyed it. Who cares if Mastro was involved, it's still interesting. He's done enough damage, trying to expunge his significant role in the hobby's history is only doing more, in my opinion. As to the transaction itself, it strikes me that $320 must have seemed like a steal to many collectors at the time, as $1,500 for a decent Wagner must have struck some also. Sure, it was 1971, but I was out of college and working then, and that wasn't a fortune or anything. If you were trying to complete the set at the time, both of those prices seem quite reasonable.

Hi, just curious, what year did you meet Mastro?

Joe

$320 in 1971 adjusted for inflation is $1872 today. A steal.

Even adjusting for the minuscule amounts collectors were used to paying for cards back then, those sums paid by Mastro for the key cards to complete the set just don't seem like that much. Obviously, that's what he thought!

Agreed. With what we know today none of us would hesitate in 1971 to plunk down $320 for a Plank, but I'm sure the vast majority of card collectors probably thought that was crazy.

Yes, crazy or at least not smart. But if you've spent years putting that set of 500+ together, and have developed some sense of just how difficult those last two are going to be, the opportunity to grab them at anything like those amounts would seem like a once in a lifetime opportunity. And obviously, the rapid acceleration in the prices for them thereafter means that many collectors did come to that awareness. It makes me wonder how many collectors were working on advanced T-206 collections at the time, or did that number just start to increase dramatically at about that time, thus creating the demand that drove the prices up astronomically?

+1. Regardless of his later misdeeds, these events regarding the early history of the hobby, even including Mastro's involvement, are truly fascinating! Keep 'em coming!

Best to all,

Larry

It's interesting that Plank was cheaper pre-internet when it would've been harder to find.

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nice article, keep them coming.