I've found this thread really amusing, hopefully it won't devolve like a few others have. Johns ad is one of the funniest things I've seen on her in a long time.
I've also given it a lot of thought, and I'm a bit more ambivalent about the auction than most.
I think describing the card as maybe a partial Wagner is a long stretch right now. .
Perhaps in a few years with more research it will be less of a stretch. Maybe even provable someday. But that day is years if not decades away.
Brock has some good points.
We don't know how many were printed
Or what method was used to stop production and destroy any remaining.
But.......
We can make a few good guesses.
There are very few Piedmont Wagners. I can only find references to two, I'd assume maybe another 2-3.
SC Wagners come with both factory 25 and 30 backs. And there are quite a few of them compared to Piedmonts.
The sales figures are approximately known for both brands.
So it's possible to estimate the total number of 150 series cards.
It's likely that SC production of the sheet including Wagner was stopped, probably quicker than weeks or months later. Communication between major cities wasn't all that slow. And there are a number of 150 series cards that show production was either stopped early (Magie) Or stopped and plates redone. (Tinker hands on knees, maybe a couple others)
The numbers lead me to believe no set of plates was run much longer than 3-4 weeks,
I think the Piedmont Wagners are most likely printers scrap, finished fronts used as setup sheets.
The sheet layouts aren't known, not even the overall size. There are some good theories, but nothing proven yet.
It is possible to group each card by small differences in the fronts.
It might be possible to also do that for the backs, but aside from a few major consistent flaws like the plate scratches it's not certain.
So, perhaps someday it will be possible to know what both cards of a miscut back are, but not now. And I doubt there are enough Piedmont Wagners to ever make something like this provable.
I'll leave the value of something like that up to each individual, many of us wouldn't care, some would. Just as some of us would care about a minor caption problem, and some don't. Either view is just fine.
Steve B
PS - Can we all just stop valuing brand differences like Drum and Uzit ? At least until I have one of each? ......didn't think so...
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