I bought the 1st Henry Reccius Wagner card after it was discovered/marketed/sold by Hunt Auctions in the late 1990s. I paid $14k+ and thought it went kind of “cheap”. When I talked with David Hunt shortly after the auction he said a lot of phone lines were down (was a “live” auction) and a lot of potential bidders were lost for this reason (online auctions weren’t around yet).
A month or 2 after I had the card David Hunt reached out to me saying another one was “discovered” and did I want to buy it privately. It was being offered to me since I owned the 1st one. I was concerned, to say the least, and I did not buy the 2nd one. He had sent me crude scans, via fax, and I passed on it. Some time later I talked with David Hunt regarding the 2nd one and whatever happened with it and he told me it was deemed a hoax as the “crude scans” were actually taken from catalog pics of the 1 I had.
I ended up selling the card through a Mastro auction a couple of years later and made good money on it…
To this day, some 25 years later, I am still puzzled by that card. Something just wasn’t right about it. It was (is) of a completely different paper fiber than other cards/mounts/cabinets from the late 1800s/early 1900s. It was (is) of an orangish/brownish color paper which is also odd.
The Reccius Wagner I owned was the one that now resides in the baseball Hall of Fame. It’s also interesting to note that I had talked to people at the HOF while I owned it and at that time they wanted nothing to do with it.
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