[FrankWakefield]

Hold on now.... it could have been legit. I'm wrong about stuff sometimes. (I know I'll see someone clip and paste that back at me...)

Were you by yourself? A scam is much more likely if you're on your own. Were you a regular customer of the store, or first time ever in there?

To sink the hook well, cons let you make the move. If they make it then little alarms might go off in your head.

It could have been for real. But tell me this. Which seems more likely to you... a young collector pays an old, wise, (possibly concerned about his reputation or desirous of repeat business) dealer $500 for a 1913 newspaper... or two guys might try to pull a $500 scam on someone???

Only paper I can think of that might bring anywhere near that much would be something from around April 15, 1912... when Hub Perdue pitched a 3 hit shutout victory for the Braves over Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants. Hub's best game of his major league career. The collectible interest in such a paper would stem from the coverage not of that game, but of a new, unsinkable ocean liner, the Titanic, having been crippled following contact with an ice berg.