Wagner's back up on eBay!

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Posted By: Chris

Last week, there was a thread about a fake T206 Wagner with a $6M BIN...It ended at about $300 grand but didn't meet the reserve.

It's back. This time, however, it "only" has a $1.7M BIN amount. And it's a private auction.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1975580355

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Posted By: Robert

How does Ebay let this crap go on? Wish we could warn bidders. Robert

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Posted By: jay behrens

becuase they make money off it. With a huge opening bid and reserve price auction, they are making a nice chunk of change just from the listing fee.

Jay

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Posted By: Bruce Moreland

Yes, they are making $5.30.

$3.30 is the listing fee that they charge you for anything with an opening bid of $200 or more.

They get charged $2.00 more when their reserve is not met.

It is a common misconception that eBay's listing fee is a percentage of the opening bid.

bruce

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Posted By: runscott

I have been looking for the elusive "blue-eyed Wagner" for many years, always suspecting that it existed, but until now unable to prove it. As a "Wagner only" collector, this has been a search akin to the search for the "Ark of the Covenant", so as I type these words with sweating hands, you can imagine my exhilaration coupled with apprehension. Could my dream finally be realized?

The story that has been passed down to me through several generations of "Wagner only" collectors goes thusly:

While it has always been accepted that Wagner had brown eyes, the great Honus himself, on his death-bed, called to his side his male nurse (my great-great grandfather) and whispered in his ear "dark contacts". Since at the time contact lenses had not yet been invented, my ancestor was completely befuddled. Still, he remembered the words and passed the story to his son, and it eventually came to me, told to me by my father on my eighteenth birthday, as has always been the family tradition.

For years I thought that "dark contacts" referred to shady business partners, or perhaps Wagner had said something completely different - "dork contracts" or something similar. But about five years ago I was reading though a Wagner biography and I learned two crucial facts: all of Wagner's child-hood photos showed light-colored eyes, and he had a passion for technology, investing heavily in automobiles and other cutting-edge areas. It was not difficult to imagine that Wagner might have met an early contact lense pioneer while travelling, and perhaps invested in the technology. Indeed, Adoph Fick, a Swiss physician first reported the use of contact lenses in the year 1888, when Honus was only fourteen. I feel certain that Fick must also have been a baseball enthusiast and perhaps even attended Pirates games in order to watch the famed shortstop while visiting the U.S. in search of financial support for his new invention. It is not hard to imagine that Fick might have met with Wagner and asked that he try out a pair of experimental lenses. Because they were made of glass, Fick undoubtedly introduced a dark dye into the lenses in order to cut down on glare, which would also have aided ballplayers playing games under the bright sun. My understanding is that Wagner very seldom dropped a pop-fly after the year 1905, and never wore sunglasses.

Many believe that the scarcity of the t206 Wagner is due to Wagner's disdain for tobacco, and that he demanded the cards be pulled from the market once he knew that his image was being used to promote cigarettes. But we know that Wagner enjoyed the use of tobacco from time to time, so a much more likely scenario is that when Wagner discovered the "blue-eyed" premiere card, he demanded that they all be destroyed and replaced with a "brown-eyed" version, so that no one would discover his "brown contact lense" secret. The American Tobacco Company simply took too long to comply and Wagner refused to accept their apology and endorse the new "brown-eyed" version.

Please let me know your thoughts on this. Meanwhile, I plan to raise funding to purchase all known t206 "brown eyes" and return the color of their eyes to the rightful blue color.

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Posted By: Brian Weisner

Hi Scott
I found an old box of 1909 crayons a few weeks ago in my Grandfather's attic, while looking for his lost T206's. I'll be happy to send you the Blue Crayon, so Wagners eyes will have the right color for the period. I bet David won't even be able to tell. LMK Brian

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Posted By: David

There actually was a form of lithography called 'crayon' or 'chalk' lithography, because it resembles (often quite deceptively) a crayon or chalk sketch. A rare baseball example of this is the 1878 Forbes Comic Trade Card set.

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Posted By: David

To show that picking up a kid's crayon to make a counterfeit is not pure goofiness: In the British Museum, London, there hung for over 100 years a famous engraving. After suspicions arose, they did tests. It turned out a counterfeiter made a copy way back when by making a sketch with a pen. It took great skill because of the details of the origina etching and, because of a technical reason not worth going into, he had to draw the whole thing backwards.

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

....

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Posted By: Jonathan Perry

This is what bothers me about this auction and this seller.

1st off none of the grading companies will grade it. That is the biggest sign that it is a fake. I know that PSA and GAI will now grade high end cards that are altered (trimmed etc) and place them in a holder that reads authentic. He can not even get this done
2nd It does not even look real!!!
3rd Lets say the auction is legit and this guy acutally has some sucker biding 300K+ for this reprint,
I am sure the winning bidder will have a decent leagal team backing him. So now if this guy sells the card he his going to have a bunch of lawyers harassing him for months or years to come, trying to get this poor guys money back for him. No to mention several possible pending law suits. Why anyone would want that aggravation is beyond me.
4th Lets say the card doesn't sell to put some rediculous reserve like he must have over $300,000 has got to cost a pretty penny.
So this seller is really doing himself absolutly no good except wasting his own time and his own money, not to mention causing me to waste my time to write about it. The only reason I do so is it angers me so much that a reprint can fetch so much money on e-bay.
5th Did I mention the card does not even look REAL!!!

If this seller was smart he should have just listed the card as an old reprint get $100 for it and call it a day.

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Posted By: David

Points 2 and 5 are exactly right. I also agree that he should just sell the damn thing as a reprint for $5 and get over it.

After reading through the seller's website, it is apparent that he is 'not all there.' Your points are perfectly logical, which is why they won't work on him. I tend to wonder if he is mentally impaired.

It is more than unlikely that the bids are legitimate. A real Wagner in that condition would likely not sell that high if was auctioned by MastroNet.

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Posted By: MW

Scott --

Thank you for carefully addressing all historical anomalies with your meticulous research and laudable attention to detail. Indeed, your lyrical prose, while unsettling to some, finally mends the torn fabric of diachronic hearsay. And it is no easy thing to admit that I have been unable to sleep since the end of the last Wagner auction. Now, unencumbered by endless unanswered questions, I can finally rest.

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Posted By: leon

if this card were in a Mastro AND were real (which it obviously isn't) I believe it would sell in the 300k range or more....the corners are nmt and the staining would bring it down 2 grades.....a 4-5 wagner would bring big, big bucks....and I am sure this fools previous auction had 0 good bids (out of the 300K)...regards all....

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Posted By: Brian C Daniels

Does your wife get to hear you read this stuff to her when you post it? Mine would be amused and does read these.

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Posted By: BcD

thoughts!

Cardknowledge@earthlink.net

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Posted By: David

Leon, I considered the Near Mint corners and the extreme surface damage (staining) to be mutually exclusive-- meaning this combination may appear on a varnished reprint, but is unlikely on a Wagner that would appear in a MastroNet auction. So I based my admitedly loose grading of the card on the thoroughly unattractive staining and excluded the sharp corners from the equation.

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Posted By: David

Before I hurt my sales, I point out that above quoted 'admitedly loose grading' was refering to this pseudo-Wagner and not to the items I sell.

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Posted By: runscott

I can easily understand why no one wants to admit this card is real. But we have all seen the modern Wagner reprints and it's obvious that most most of them were modeled from the "Blue Eyes Premiere" version rather than the less-desirable ones we see going for mear hundreds of thousands - just compare all the characteristics of a Wagner reprint we have discussed previously and you will see that they match up exactly with the "Blue Eyes Premiere".

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Posted By: runscott

Everyone has their odd hobbies - one of mine is revisionist history. Every time a new political party takes over, history is again revised to explain away problems or account for successes. Umberto Eco is an expert at this technique and has written several novels and essays that take "grey areas" of history and insert "facts" that make stories more interesting. One of his novels, "Foucault's Pendulum" takes this to extremes, creating a multi-century conspiracy based on historical facts and semi-plausable "what if" events created by Eco himself.

But back to the Wagner issue - I agree that the "premiere Wagner" owner is a nut-case. As others have pointed out, there is no way he can pull this off. I'm hoping that he will take my email seriously and revise his web-site to use my story as part of his research.

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Posted By: runscott

"Hi,
I am the owner of the t-206 honus wagner card " blue eyes" card on e-bay. I read the story and I don't know what to think on it. Are you telling the truth or a big lie. If you have some facts on this matter. Can you send them to me or tell me were you got the info. from."

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Posted By: David

Fair to say that Scott F. and Dan Mathewson are the resident muck rakers of the board-- and I mean that in a good sense. When it comes to AAA and fake Honus Wagners, we need more people trouble makers, not fewer.

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Posted By: runscott

Hi,
You are entitle to you own opinion. But can you tell me that this card is a fake. If you say that the image is to old looking then guess what the card is 93 years old. Second if you say it a repaint then guess what, if it was their wouldn't be a factory No.25 2.dist. Va. on the back of the card, it would say reprint on the back of the card or there wouldn't be no print at the button period due to someone scratching the reprint name off the card. So do your research before you give an opinion on something so rare because for the past 25 years I have done my research!


Thank You

From: <runscott@bellsouth.net>
To: <rainbow9@worldnet.att.net>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 7:54 AM
Subject: Question for seller -- Item #1846720201


> Yawn.....so who are these "best known collectors"? Why do all these fakes come from Ohio and Kentucky? You should change your "location" to somewhere
that people have more faith in...like Hawaii.
>
> Thanks for the morning's entertainment...
> --------------------
>
>
> Question from: runscott
> Title of item: Honus Wagner 1909-T206 The real McCoy!!!!!
> Seller: rainbow9@worldnet.att.net
> Starts: Jul-25-02 18:56:39 PDT
> Ends: Aug-04-02 18:56:39 PDT
> Price: Currently $100,000.00
> To view the item, go to:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1846720201
>

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Posted By: jay behrens

nice to see that he dodged the pertiment question of who the collectors and experts were.

Jay

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Posted By: B C Daniels

the winner can find out all of this and the answers to most of this are on my web site! This guy is a kid.A punk kid who needs some jail time!