did the t206 strip sell?

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Posted By: dennis

wonder if it met the sellers reserve?
http://www.lelands.com/bid.aspx?auctionid=704&lot=1

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Posted By: Steve Murray

My guess is that it did not. With an "estimate" of $400,000 to $500,000 I would think that the consignor was probably looking for at least a million. Leland's estimates are usually unrealistically low. In this case they missed the mark by a mile.

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Posted By: Peck

The reserve was $50,000 and the hammer was $252,723.54 . . with juice - $296,950.16

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Geez, I must be blind. Didn't see the reserve. Just read that it had a "confidential" reserve. Guess that once an auction closes they reveal the reserve. My bad

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Posted By: barrysloate

Steve- you can't have a lot with a 400-500K estimate and a $1 million reserve. I believe NY auction law only allows a reserve to be equal to or lower than the low end of the estimate. So the highest the secret reserve could have been was 400K. Since it fell well below that, it may not have sold.

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Thanks Barry.

I was basing my guesstimate on Leland's practice of putting unrealistically low estimates in its auctions.

Looks like they complied with New York law since the reserve was only $50,000.

Does that reserve surprise anyone else?

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Posted By: barrysloate

Actually, $50,000 was the opening bid, not the reserve.

Since they stated there was a confidential reserve, we know that it was more than the opener.

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Posted By: MVSNYC

according to their website, it DID NOT sell, because it didn't meet the hidden reserve price...i think almost $300K with the juice was more than i expected it to reach, how much more did the consignor want? last time it was at auction it only sold for around $80K...they should have been very happy with $250K+...oh well.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I guess the owner just wasn't ready to let it go.

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Posted By: Peck

It looks like it didn't sell now. They have changed the information on the lot since 9:15 am to delete the hammer & juice and add it did not meet the reserve. How do they call the opening bid a reserve too?

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Posted By: Steve Murray

I'm really confused. The listing clearly says: "RESERVE: $50,000.00" not "Opening Bid: $50,000.00". Seems a tad misleading notwithstanding the small print.

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Posted By: leon

I think Josh Evans reads this board so maybe he will clarify what went on....

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Posted By: JimB

It states on the site that it did not meet the seller's confidential reserve. Being that it never sold for over 90k before and that it was close to 300k with the juice this time and still did not meet the reserve, I am thinking the seller either did not really want to sell it, was being a bit greedy, or was just convinced by the hype in his head.
JimB

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Did he sell it before or is he still the owner?

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Posted By: Pennsylvania Ted

I think I was the 1st one to have said it....and, at the risk of being a kiljoy....these 5 cards are not
a regular production "continuous" strip. Enlargen the scan and you will observe that these are five
individual proofs that have been very carefully pasted together on a blank-back strip of cardboard.

Nevertheless, it certainly is a neat item....but, if I owned it, since these are individual cards, I would
separate them and either keep them or sell them individually. They are worth more as individual cards.

Conversely, if this was an authentic (original production) uncut piece....it would be the "real gem" of
the hobby.

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Posted By: Aaron

Ted,
Curious if you also think that each card has a blank back pasted to the blank back cardboard?

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Posted By: MVSNYC

Ted- i previously also said that i think it would be worth more seperated...a wagner proof on its own? that would be worth a fortune.

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Posted By: Pennsylvania Ted

The Wagner card, paradoxically, has its full coloring......while the Brown, Bowerman, and Kling are
missing blue ink on their collars. And, CYoung's uniform is missing several colors. Red "B" is missing
on Bowerman.

It's really strange....Wagner is a complete card....the other four are the "proof" cards.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I don't know the financial relevance of the high losing bid on a reserve auction and I don't know where the owner purchased the card. However, this price is about 2x the highest previous auction price. I've always thought the piece was undervalued, so am of the opinion that this high bid and reserve are fair valuations.

If Ted is correct, I don't think that ruins the value. After all, what would the single proofs sell for after being slabbed by SGC and PSA? What would a Cy Young proof alone sell for? I bet the PSA graded Wagner alone would sell for significantly more than the strip ever has.

There can be complications if things are stuck together, but a strip or sheet or group of cards shouldn't be valued less than the most expensive single card.

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Posted By: mr. moses

I could have seen the strip close up when I had the chance. Pretty sure I was at that auction. Steve won the card @ around 80,000.00 including buyer's penalty. After congratulating him I told him he should never sell it for less than 1/2 million dollars. No joke! Hearing that the strip is reconstructed alters that view for me a good deal and now I think I know why it sold for under 100,000. in the first place. 1/4 million seems pretty sweet but then again that's only as much as 4 or 5 four base hits cards Just to note that "proofs" can occur at many points in the printing and manufacturing process and for more than one purpose. There are different stages of the color aplication process, allignment issues, samples for printer, etc.. Unless they were mock-ups they couldn't be attached AND be in different stages of inking....JMO.

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Posted By: barrysloate

5 Four Base Hits Cards...that's twenty total bases!

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Posted By: Rich Klein

From a note in the official Press Release about the conclusion of this auction:

Two Honus Wagner items of note: his home in Carnegie, PA went unsold, and the 5-card strip which included his T-206 card failed to meet the seller’s reserve.


Regards
Rich

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Posted By: barrysloate

It is kind of unusual that Leland's accepted the strip under the condition of so high a reserve. There were bidders willing to pay multiples of the highest price it had ever sold for, and if that final bid was not sufficient the owner should just have kept it. I know having a high profile item is good publicity for the auction house, but when your feature lot doesn't sell some of the luster of that publicity is lost.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Don't know about the neighborhood, but the min bid seemed like a good price for the house whether or not Wagner lived in it. Of course, if an off auction deal was ever to be made, it would be made on a house.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I liked the lot with Wagner's stained glass windows. I actually thought about that one.

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Posted By: Dylan

Whether the strip was reconstructed or not i cannot say, but its too bad the Wagner wasn't placed one spot over so it could be in the condition of the Bowerman. Besides the Kling, the Wagner card is in the worst shape out of them all. Imagine even if it was in "good" condition!

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Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

At this point I'm not sure anybody can say how high the bidding actually went. As I understand the law in New York State, an auction house may place ficticious bids up to the item's reserve. This actually is quite a common and accepted practice (though in my view repugnant because its sole purpose is to mislead perspective bidders into believing that there is an actual bidder at those ficticious bids) among the major auction houses (e.g., Sothebys, Christies). So with that said, unless we know for a fact that the last bid was not a ficticious house bid (which I'm not saying was but legally could have been), we wouldn't really know how high a real bidder would be willing to pay for the item. And even if that last bid was from a real bidder, in the event he/she was bid up to that point through ficticious house bids, the market around that final bid could conceivably be so thin as to be only one person.

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Posted By: Peck

Corey . . Your thoughts about the true value of the strip are correct. Unless we hear from some actual bidders with their bid levels the final auction price means nothing. It is standard practice for the auction house to bid the reserve to protect the seller. A reserve auction only takes one bidder to reach the reserve or sale price. Another bidder that may factor in getting close to the reserve price is "friend of the reserve". The owner of the item with a reserve knows how far a bidder can go without winning the item. The auction house would have no part in this. With this said, it is possible to reach a price just below a reserve without a single real bidder. Again, the auction house would be completely legal and honest on their part. It's my guess that owners of items get caught trying to bid their reserve at times because auction houses will hammer an item sold below the set reserve. The strip for example. If the reserve was set at $275,000, it could have been hammered at the $252,723.54 because the juice carried it to $296,950.16 and that doesn't include profit from seller fees. A sale and a profit for the auction house and consigner. They would pay the consigner based on the $275,000 reserve price.

It's 99% certain to me that the last advance on the strip was the auction house bidding the reserve. If it were a real bidder then the house would have to come back again to protect the reserve.

Did anyone place a bid on this strip?

Can the auction house clarify why the "$50,000 Reserve" was used in the description in place of "Opening Bid"?

Leon . . I am:
Clarence T. (Peck) Dean III

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Posted By: barrysloate

I think their use of the term "$50K reserve" was a misnomer. Once it was stated there was a hidden reserve higher than that number, all the 50K meant was "opening bid." I think we are making too much of that number. The only ones that really matter are the last bid, and to an almost equal extent, the one directly before it.

This is an example of why bidders should set a ceiling and work toward that goal- and then stop and say "I'm done." Once you start using the previous bid as a guide, especially on a lot where there is a stated reserve, you can never be sure if there is someone else who values the lot as high as you, or you are bidding against the book.

What Leland's did is legal by auction law, just not something that bidders favor. But they could not have gotten the strip without entering an agreement with the seller, and I presume they weighed the pros and cons and decided it was worth taking it.

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Posted By: Solomon Cramer

The Wagner strip was bought out of Halper/Sotheby's by Steve Verkman somewhere in the low $80s.

I bought it out of his subsequent auction for about $91k.

I gave it away in a promotion on Shop @ Home in 2000 or 2001 I believe, over the XMas season. I may still have some of the promo pieces we used, I think the drawing was the end of January or February 1.

If I remember correctly, some woman in the south won it.

It was then consigned (though I have no idea if it exchanged hands in between) to Mastro, which sold it for about $70-80k if I remember - I know the buyer, was actually talking to him when he bought it, so can confirm it definately sold there. Whether it's changed hands since that night, I can't say, but I doubt it.

I do remember noting that Verkman's auction brough the most of the three sales (in other words, I was the king sucker!)

I took it out of the holder, and looked at it pretty closely. I wasn't looking for anything out of the ordinary, but I certainly didn't have any questions about it being pasted together at the time.

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Posted By: Wesley

That makes it three prior owners that I know of who looked at the strip up close and did not think the strip consisted of cards pasted together.

Ted, Have you ever held the strip up close to inspect it?

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Posted By: Pennsylvania Ted

I have not examined this strip in person. I have enlargened a picture of it and examined closely.
That said, I don't think that most will disagree with my contention that this strip is NOT the result
of a standard T206 production piece......for the following reasons:

(1)....The Wagner is in full color, while the other 4 cards are not (a printing impossibility on such an
intact 5-card strip)

(2)....There is a "gloss-like" appearance to the Wagner, that is not evident on the normal production
Wagner cards (and yes, I have seen several Wagner cards in person).

(3)....T206's are "WHITE BORDER" cards, why are the borders of the 5 cards on this strip "tan-like" in color ?

This really raises the question when was this strip actually printed. Recall, the T207 cards have very similar
"tan-like" colored borders.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I agree completely with Ted that the Wagner that is on the strip looks different than a regular issue Wagner. There is some kind of surface sheen or higher resolution that distinguishes it.

And while I saw it in person several times in the 90's I have no recollection of the cards being detached, but they might be.

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

This strip reminds me of that phony Goudey calendar card from a few months ago....

For anyone who even remotely thinks the strip is real, look at it again. Click it up in the auction site. Now open another window beside it and go to eBay, or somewhere that has real cards. Forget about the colors that are missing, (Bowerman's red B, Young's gray jersey).... Look at the buttons on Bowerman and Brown on their real cards. The buttons are white. Same as the border. American Litho wasn't using white ink, that is a lack of ink that shows white. And that is the color those borders should be. If the buttons on that strip are white, so should the borders, too. But they're not.

At the beginning I said I'd not pay $5 for that Goudey thing. I would pay $5 for this strip, not because it is authentic, but because it is kinda neat looking. But it isn't from 1909. Folks look at it and get excited and want it to be real... but it isn't.

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Posted By: JimB

Very interesting. I greatly appreciate Ted and Frank's astute observations. They raise some very serious questions. The academic in me however wants to examine every possibility and be as thorough as possible before making a "definative" determination.

The lack of red and blue on the Bowerman card, etc when it is present on others leads one to think that this would be impossible for a legitimate five card strip. But isn't it possible that since this is presumably a proof that such changes were ultimately made to the Bowerman and Young by the time they got to the the regular press run?

I'll admit that the Wagner does seem to have a particularly sharp resolution, but I think it could just be an example with particularly good focus. As for gloss, that could only be determined in person.

The tan borders are definately strange in comparison with regular production T206s, but again, this was presumably a proof run.

The issue that bothers me the most is the one Frank raises about the color variation between the borders and the "white" areas inside the borders. That one is particularly tough to explain away.

I am not trying to debunk these theories. I think both Ted and Frank have made very sharp observations. I would be curious to know what others think about these potential replies. Before the community writes off a card like this, I think we should be as thorough as possible. Carbon dating would be nice.
JimB

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Posted By: MVSNYC

i agree with everything Jim is saying here...i saw the strip in person at the Halper Sale, i don't think anyone was questioning it's authenticity back then, everyone was just blown away by its existence...

Jim has pointed out correctly that this is a proof (or supposed to be), so it makes sense and is understandable that a few of the players uniforms might look different then their final production cards, because it is after all, a proof or prototype...

it is interesting that the borders are off white, maybe this was a test or an experiment. looks like at the point of the cross-hatches, it is worn down to the original white borders or white card stock (Joe D jump in please, sir).

it is also interesting to note that the "seperation" lines that Ted speaks of, has some creasing/wrinkling at that line, maybe it was slightly scored?

well, not sure about any of this i guess, i just imagine that such a high-profile Halper piece would be authentic, or at least i would hope so...

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Posted By: barrysloate

I believe the piece is period, but it is still a few steps away from a finished T206. It's certainly a prototype of some kind, based on the different paper stock used and the different appearance of the five cards in question. It might have been one of the earliest runs off the press.

For Ted and others, were the four cards other than Wagner known only in a very early series?

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Posted By: MVSNYC

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Posted By: Wesley

Those are very interesting observations. The Lelands link above has a very detailed scan of the strip so everyone can go on there to see if they see the same things Ted and Frank see.

I cannot tell from the scan whether Wagner has gloss while the other four players on the strip do not have gloss.

Particularlly interesting is the observation thatthe other four cards are not full color while the Wagner appears to be. Until Frank pointed it out, I have never noticed that Bowerman and Brown have buttons that are missing colors that are there on the regular card.

Can we really compare this card to the fake Goudey Ruth calendar that was the topic of discussion here a few weeks ago? That card appeared to be a modern day creation. Is Ted and Frank saying that the strip is as well and no part of the strip is real? Or are they saying that real cards were pasted onto a blank blank and cross hatches and brown toning were added afterwards?

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Posted By: JimB

For Ted and others, were the four cards other than Wagner known only in a very early series?

Great question Barry.

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Posted By: JimB

One other thought:
Regular T206s are not printed on white cardboard. There is a white base that is printed first on the whole card, right? If that is the case, I can imagine that in an early proof run they may have tried or considered only putting the white base on the inside-the-border portion. This would explain Frank's qualms.
JimB

P.S. I am not trying to be an apologist, just trying to think through all possibilities.

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Posted By: Peck

M Brown . . 150 only
Bowerman . . 150/350
Young . . . 150/350
Kling . . . 150/350

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Posted By: barrysloate

According to legend, it was Wagner's granddaughter who brought this strip to light, and claimed that her grandfather had it for a very long time. My take is this was a very early test run given to Wagner for his approval, and for whatever reason, which we can debate forever, he decided not to allow his card to be distributed. Again, I believe it is period.

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Posted By: Scott Elkins

The Mordecai Brown Portrait is also found in the 150 AND 350 Series. It is the Brown Pitching Cubs on Chest that is the Mordecai card ONLY found in the 150 Series. So, the Wagner is the only card on the strip that is ONLY found in the 150 Series.

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Posted By: JimB

Had Wagner agreed, his card would probably have been included in the 350 series too.
JimB

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Posted By: Pennsylvania Ted

The Wagner card is indeed a "misfit" on this "strip". It is a 150-only card and I would be more confident in this strip's
legitimacy, if it's companion cards were any of the following T206's.





Frank makes a great point; and, my concerns regarding the "glossiness" (or better described by Barry, as a "sheen")
to the Wagner....and the light brown borders (instead of T206 "white") really raises questions that astute hobbyist's
should have raised years ago when this item first came out of the woodwork.

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Posted By: JimB

Ted,
Why would the Wagner have to be only with other 150 only cards. It seems to me that as long as the others were also in the 150 series, it is fine in that respect. If the other cards were 460 only, then there would be a serious problem. But the fact that the other 150s on the sheet happened to be reissued in the 350 series does not seem problematic. We presumably know why Wagner was not issued in the 350 series.
JimB

P.S. Why do you include Plank in your list, since Plank was also issued in the 350 series? Or am I misreading your list of cards here?


edited for grammar and clarity.

Edited to add: All 150/350s started as 150 only's.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Proofs are test prints, typically with different graphics than the final product and often on different stock.

It is known that the American Tobacco Company sent single cards to players trying to get their rights, as the letters with cards (single card not strip) have been auctioned. The story that they sent a card, or something, to Wagner to get his approval is not strange.

Jim is correct the at the original unprinted sheets of cardboard were front coated in white (this was done by the cardboard manufacturers not the printers). This was because the printers had no white ink, and white on a T206 is lack of ink. Almost no printer has white ink, not even your computer printer. That cards here are white in the picture and tan borders is unusual.

If it's theorized these cards were singles put together, it's also plausible that the strip was scored to show to Wagner what the individual cards would look like.

Beyond the theory that these are pieced together singles, I don't see anything that suggest to me that the cards are fake. They are different in ways than final cards, but proofs are often different.

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Posted By: Pennsylvania Ted

My feeling is that the 150-only cards are very unique in the T206 issue. In all likelihood, these 12 (or so) cards
were the very 1st cards printed when T206 production was started up in 1909.
Therefore, Mr. Wagner would have been on a strip (or panel) adjoined with some of these other 11 cards that
I have displayed here (that is if this 5-card strip was an actual production, or even prototype piece).

Others may disagree with my opinion, and that's certainly fine. But, they qualify their differing opinion by simply
passing it off as "proof strip". But, as one who was in Research and Development, I have a pretty darn good in-
sight into what it takes to put something into production. So, whether it be an electronics system or just printing
a sheet of BB cards, I do not see this strip as an original prototype (it does not fit the "template").


And Jim, regarding Plank....if you recall, some months ago I theorized that the discontinuance of the T206 Plank card
was possibly the result of the American Caramel Company's "exclusive right" to portray Eddie Plank; and, most of
Connie Mack's Phila. A's players (ca. 1908-09).

In the 1st Series of T206's, Plank and Wagner are only found with Piedmont 150 or Sweet Cap 150 Fac. 25 backs,
and that's proof enough for me that they were both printed on the same sheets.

Subsequently, Plank was printed (in very limited quantities) with a Sweet Cap 350 Fac. 30 back. And, as was
discussed in the aforementioned Plank thread, was possibly met again with legal contention by Am. Caramel Co.

Finally, I am not suggesting that this strip is a "phony"....it just isn't an original 1909 prototype, typical of the
original T206 white border cards

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Posted By: Joe

It goes without saying that the corollary to the posts which point out "problems" with the strip is that the story of it being found amongst Wagner's effects is bunk. In fact, I'd say that most players in this game consider that story to be crap BECAUSE IF IT WERE TRUE (OR GENERALLY BELIEVED TO TRUE) THE CARD IS MONUMENTALLY UNDERVALUED.