Ray would not say where he acquired the card, to this day keeping mum about what the card was up to between 1909 and 1986. He was forced to sell it because of "a money situation," Ray was quoted as saying in a 2001 New York Daily News article by O'Keeffe and colleague Bill Madden, which first traced the buying-and-selling history of the card.
Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...#ixzz1tq6cQO1M