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Posted By: David Smith

Peter, the old time collector, who I call my Mentor, started with the Wagner as one of his first cards.

My Mentor lived in Pennsylvania and started collecting cards in 1948 using his paper route money. He bought the Bowman baseball cards and then went to football and boxing. Same thing in 1949. When Topps came on the scene in 1951, he started collecting those also.

In late 1952, the druggist at the Drug Store where he bought his cards brought out two unopened boxes of Topps High Number baseball cards and offered them to him for what his cost was. This was because the kids were buying the football cards and NOT the baseball cards. My Mentor bought the boxes and went home and opened them. My Mentor says the 1952 Mantle is TRIPLE printed, based on what he found in those boxes.

At the start of the 1953 baseball season, when the new Topps cards came out, my Mentor says the druggist again brought out two (the lsst two) unopened boxes of 1952 High Numbers and offered them to him at cost. My Mentor again bought the two boxes and went home and opened them.

BAD NEWS!!!! Some time between the early 1950's and 1958 or 1959, my Mentor's Father threw out his card collection. Based on the fact that he had at least 15 1952 Topps Mantles, my Mentor KNOWS there were at least $1 million dollars worth of cards that were trashed.

When my Mentor started collecting cards again, his Grand Father heard about it and gave him the cards he had collected as a youth. The cards were mostly T206's and Honus Wagner was one of the cards in the group. My Mentor said his Grand Father told him that he had a second Wagner at one time but gave it away to somebody else who was a Wagner fan. That started my Mentor's love affair with "The Monster".

To this day, my Mentor does NOT have a complete set because he never went after the Plank and decided the Doyle variation was NOT something special. To make things tough, he started going after EVERY Southern League player and EVERY back variation, as far as the differnt companies was concerned. He said he got to within 11 cards and quit because it took him five years to find one card and go from 12 to 11. I do not know what 11 cards he needs or what companies he is missing.

I do know that Bill Mastro is a friend of my Mentor's because he introduced me to Mastro about 1997. I also know that my Mentor is selling off most of his collection. He is piecing it out to different auction houses (the two Caramel felts of Mathewson and Lajoie in the current Lipset auction are his) but he is keeping the T206's so he can give them to his Son.

My one wish (that never came true) was that I could have won the lottery about five years ago so I could have bought EVERYTHING my Mentor owned. Ah well....

David