I cannot see any logic in this card having to be traced back to 1909, when no other Wagner is held to that standard (because then all or almost all would be fake). Treating it different because that is the only way to justify the outcome people evidently want is not reason. If the highest grade Wagner must be held to a different standard (which is of course, not reasonable in the first place; one of any group of surviving items will be the nicest), then that standard is still not even applicable to this card, an altered card (for which the evidence led to a conviction in criminal court). Even if we just call it the best anyways, if we toss it out as a fake the current #2 becomes the nicest. Can it's provenance be traced back to 1909? Is it fake if it cannot? What will be the justification this time for why this card and this card alone is to be held to a different standard, uniquely made up because there is no actual evidence?
I do not know where this was found; Sevchuk's testimony is evidence, he was the dealer and deeply involved. It ain't a lot of evidence. It was not so long ago that it is necessarily lost to time. This was a good and reasoned question, to see if we can produce any evidence here for any outcome. Thus far we've got 1) a conspiracy theory that appears to reject evidence at a conceptual level and 2) an untruth. If the answer is "we got nothing else", then that's the answer. Juicy BS being invented hurts, not helps.
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