Quote:
Originally Posted by yanks12025
It appears that a printing of Sweet Caporal, with Wagner, was not only completed, but that cards had already made their way out into the world, and that at a minimum, Piedmont was on the presses - with Wagner. And some Piedmont Wagners had been printed.
We don't know how much of a run with Wagner there was in Piedmont. Wagner may have been there the whole run, and they destroyed them.
Perhaps they could not destroy all the Sweet Caporal as they had already left the factory by the time word came. So it was not that factory workers did not listen, a number of Sweet Caporal had already gone out. But perhaps the Piedmont Wagners were all still there to destroy.
When examining what is before us, for now, and 20 years from now, I think you first need 'a world of the possible' to examine. This card, this idea, of possible partial Wagners from the sheet, must include Piedmont, as we know Piedmont Wagners were printed.
I honestly think it is the money aspect here that is clouding objective perspective. This is an interesting topic, card, etc. That should not be dismissed on momentary fancy.
I believe Steve is correct, in that there is more that can be discovered.
In my opinion, there is nothing unholy or improper about any of this. It is possible and interesting.
As a side, the inauthentic Wagner, and the inauthentic card variations, created to defraud, are not proper, possible, or interesting. They are fraud.
Also as a side, how do we know the Mastro Wagner was originally hand cut, and not a large (or about regular size) factory cut, that was trimmed?
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The problem is that there's so much that isn't known about the production and distribution of
any T206. Stuff like the sheet size and makeup can probably be figured out, although maybe not with absolute certainty. Other things, especially anything about how they were sent from ALC to the various factories will probably never be known.
Without that, there's no way of knowing when or how the Wagner was removed from production. There are a number of possibilities, but none provable.
My current thinking is that there were a few sheets common to all brands in a group, and others that were specific to a brand and factory and sales area.
So it's not certain that Wagner would have been on a regular production Piedmont sheet. The two that we know of argue against it.
As for destruction of completed work, that depends. While nobody likes doing it, it happens. We did a huge batch of course catalogs for MIT. And delivered maybe half of them. There was no space left in the office we delivered them to after we left. We were even putting a case under each desk and under chairs. A couple months later we threw away the rest, around 25,000 of them. Printed, bound into books, packed. And I had to open the boxes and dump them all- No point in wasting the boxes. But the company was paid for them.
So yes, if Wagner got ATC to stop distribution and ATC paid ALC for the sheets or even finished cards, then ALC may have decided to toss them all rather than spend the effort to remove just the Wagners. (Even with fairly low labor costs)
As things stand now, I would simply consider the card to be a P150 with a miscut back. It's one I'd maybe pay a small premium for, but more like 40-50 instead of 30.
Making the Wagner claim is so far outside what's currently known that there needs to be more proof. And there simply isn't.
I'm familiar with this, in one of my other hobbies I wrote an article about an item that was known from records to have been produced, written about in 1932, then the 1932 article was essentially proven wrong - Until I found one that was provable. And oddly, it's only provable because of what's essentially a miscut showing a fraction of a plate number. And it's provable because the location of the plate number is different from the ones that are commonly mistaken for the one I found. (keep in mind, this is something where the sheet size, layout, method of production, exact number produced etc are all known.
Steve B