I had forgot about this information that Tim posted when he was doing his sheet mystique article but something similar to this I find believable with the Wagner. It's possible that American Lithograph printed up salesman sample sheets that were totally different than the production sheets they were printing and the Wagner and Plank were on this sample sheets together and if Bill Mastro is telling the truth the stack of cards he saw with the Wagner could have come from a cut up salesman sample sheet. It could also explain the handful of Wagner and Plank Piedmont 150's as they all could have come from different salesman sheets.
This is part of that article, I think a member still has the 57 cards in this article.
One such story began in 1999, when a gentleman from Florida contacted a well-known dealer with a group of T206s that he wanted to sell. According to a list the man provided, the cards had either Sweet Caporal 350 or blank backs, and all were hand cut. The gentleman explained that his family originally was from the Northeast, and his grandfather was a salesman who had sheets of T206s that he used as samples. In the late teens or early 1920s, several of the sheets were cut into individual cards for the grandson to enjoy as a child. The remaining complete and partial sheets were stored in the attic of the family home. Years later a fire destroyed the attic and all of the sheets. The only cards that survived were those that previously had been cut for the grandson.
During the course of the next three years, the cards were purchased in groups of four or five by the dealer, who in turn immediately sold them to a collector. In total, 57 cards were bought, and all of them ended up in the same collection. During the time of these purchases, the collector mailed to the grandson a letter that included a questionnaire about the cards, uncut sheets and family history. Time passed, but a reply never arrived. In 2002, all communication between the grandson and dealer ceased, and so did the pipeline of cards. According to the original list from the grandson, there were other cards in addition to those that the dealer and collector were able to buy.
The collector who purchased the cards has attempted to recreate the sheets. To date, he has been successful at piecing together cards in groups from two to eight. Though these groups do not give a complete picture of an uncut sheet, they do provide valuable information regarding the vertical placement of subjects. These groups, along with miscut cards or cards with misaligned print runs, show that subjects don’t appear to have been repeated horizontally. These cards also seem to dispel theories that subjects were grouped on sheets by team, pose, or color combinations.
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