Posted By:
Tim NewcombOK, a knowledgeable friend who has a more recent edition of SCD has filled me in.
Apparently in recent editions the SCD has badly botched up the cataloging of the 1916 Standard Biscuit set. They have a checklist with about 35-40 names on it instead of 200. This is despite the fact that this set has been fully checklisted for decades, with the exception of three rare cards (#12 Becker, #185 Wallace, #23 Cady) which have appeared in recent years. These three cards have been seen (so far, anyway) with Standard Biscuit and blank backs only. The upcoming article by Todd Schultz and myself in the summer 2008 issue of Old Cardboard will hopefully clarify the confusion.
Because of this I guess SCD decided to treat this as a separate set from other M101-5 issues, but they have done a truly horrible job of presenting it. All the info we have tells us that except for these three cards the Standard Biscuit set is otherwise exactly the same as the other M101-5 issues-- 200 cards.
However, all this is irrelevant anyway to the Honus Wagner card, which is ALWAYS seen as #184 in the M101-5 series regardless of back (#182 in M101-4). There may not have been any Standard Biscuit Wagner GRADED before, but it has always been on the checklist. It cannot in any way be considered unchecklisted.
So I should qualify my earlier post-- if you went by the SCD info, as Jeremy presumably did, you could get the impression that this was a new discovery. The original BST post and the ebay auction ARE misleading, but not intentionally so.
The asking price is another story. Normally I would say, hey, that's capitalism, if you can find someone who will pay that much, go for it. But when you throw in the claim of "unique" and "uncataloged," you could have a serious situation with a buyer that is badly misled, conceivably even defrauded, although I'm not a lawyer.
So if I were selling this card, I would definitely alter the descriptions, because they do give the impression that this is the only 1916 Standard Biscuit Honus Wagner that is known, and that's clearly not the case.
Tim