t206 Plank reprint sold at $575

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Posted By: Sammy 

Holy Smoke...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2721046326&category=31719

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Posted By: Nick

Sammy,
Not to challenge your opinion,but to perhaps learn something. I would like to know why you feel it is a reprint.

I emailed the seller and got some more details. I also did a little work on my own, and here are the facts as I see them:

The card measures correctly(within reason).
Approximently 1-7/16 by 2-1/2

The stock was somewhat thick, not paper thin.

The back had heavy amounts of glue(which could explain the color change)

I enlarged the picture and the letters appeared to be the correct size and font.

The lines on the picture match the lines(not too wide or too narrow) on a real Plank(I used Julie's as a model).

What did you see that I did not?

This is a knowledge packed group so I am looking forward to getting an education on this one...

Nick

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Posted By: leon

I am not an expert by any means. It might be real. The reason I thought it was/is a reprint is that it doesn't "look" like a real card. All of the other characteristics might be right but once you have seen enough Planks ( I have only seen about 20-30 ) you get to know that almost all of them have a little more "faded" appearance than this one. The registration does not look right either. It's "too" registered for me. I did NOT take the low feedback into account and accepted it as neutral. I could be wrong but I think this is going to be a reprint. Good thing I don't collect T206's as I would have given more thought to bidding on it....but alas ( Love that word ) I would probably still not have bitten.....again, just doesn't have the "look" to me.....good luck and best regards

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Posted By: runscott

...and that's much better than being jaded and cynical like me .

however, this is a fake. The major clues are in the description, which I won't repeat, but you can also tell from the scan. If this were a real Plank, it would not be glued in a 1945 football guide - even in 1945 this card was recognized as rare, but read on and you will see why this "card" evidently was glued into the book much more recently. Even if we assume the original owner was oblivious to the value, you can look at the facing page and see that there is no impression of the card. If you were to glue a card to a book, you would see some evidence of it on the facing page - indentations, color change, etc.
Finally, the acidity in the paper that this cheap football guide was printed on, typical of ww-II war-time printing (see browning of pages), would have had some effect on the near-perfectly white borders of the reprinted Plank. ...and the cross-hatch marks in the blue background should arouse suspicion (often happens with scanner interpretation of solid colors) as should the bends and missing piece from the left border - you would expect some stains, marks, border discoloration to go along with all the other damage.

addendum - don't be fooled because a card measures correctly and looks real. If you scan a card or a picture of a card, then glue it to cardboard, the resulting scan will almost always look real, and getting it to measure correctly is no big deal.

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Posted By: TBob

Think about it, a T206 of any player pasted in a 1945 football magazine???? I could see if the guy were naive enough to use the Plank as a book-mark, but to "paste" it in??? Has anyone EVER seen a vintage tobacco card just pasted in to the middle of a book, much less on football? This is too bizarre to be true. Methinks someone with a replica Plank and too much time on his hands dug up an old dollar football magazine and made over $500. I guess he thought a Wagner would draw too much attention. I would like to know what kind of glue was used, also, but I still think the whole things stinks to high heaven.
Just my 2 cents...

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Posted By: warshawlaw

You are indeed a card god, L. I don't think I've even heard of 20-30 Plank cards existing, much less seen that many.

Regards, Adam.

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Posted By: runscott

that his vision is "20/30", so he can recognize fakes better than the average guy.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I've seen a lot of vintage tobacco cards pasted into magazines and other books. It is common with OJ and Mayo boxing cards, and I've had many T cards with telltale traces of gluedowns (where I could read the publication's printing on the backs). People used to use magazines a lot as ersatz albums, especially when they could not afford a special album. One of the lots I regret not going after harder was a large Zeenut collection including a Thorpe that someone had pasted into a magazine.

The other point I'd make is that you can't judge a card solely because of the paper it was in contact with. Paper aging is a weird thing. External factors (light and humidity) really do figure into the process. Leave a newspaper in the sun for a day and it will look 30 years old the next morning. Last year I bought an OJ with a great picture, creamy white cardboard, and crisp white borders that had been pasted into a book and not opened for who knows how long until the noncollector seller peeled it out and sold it (SGC graded it, BTW, and I am 99.99% certain of its authenticity independent of SGC's opinion). The card looked great even though the paper surrounding it was over 100 years old because in all likelihood the book sat in dark, dry preservation-type conditions for a century. I've personally had a similar experience with an item I found. I once bought a schedule of screenings of Academy Award nominated films from 1972 as part of an estate lot of similar materials and when I opened it out fell two pristine tickets to the 1972 show. The schedule was yellowed and aged on the cover where it had been exposed to the elements, the tickets were perfect. I have also seen situations where the lower grade paper ages terribly while the higher grade paper right next to it doesn't age anywhere near as badly. Of course, in those cases I've always seen evidence of the better paper against the other paper, usually an area of lesser aging on the crappy paper.

All that being said, I do agree that the odds of someone gluing a 1910 Plank into a 1945 magazine are roughly the same as the odds of successfully landing in Tehran airport in an El Al 747.

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Posted By: leon

I ain't no expert, like I said, but I have heard the experts say there are between 100-150 Planks....folks like Doug Allen or Art M. would know better....and I have better than 20/30 but only with magnifying glass glasses regards

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Posted By: jay behrens

Have to agree that being glued in the book wouldn't neccessarily cause the card to age, but as Scott pointed out, there should be an indentation from the card.

The single most incredible Golden Age comic book I ever saw was a Human Torch #2 that had been stored between teh pages of a Life magazine. The gentleman that brought it into my store brought both and you could seen the indendation from the comic on the nearby pages. Even though the Life mag was discloured and worn, the comic survived intact almost perfecetly with the whitest pages I'd had ever seen on a Golden Age comic (GA comics probably used the most acidic paper ever known to man), a perfectly centere, rust free staple and no apparent wear anywhere to be found on the comic.

Sadly, this gentleman was unwilling to part with comic for anything less than the value he saw listed in the price guide. I tried to explain to him about price guides and the actual value he could expect to get. He did reappear a few months later, still trying to play ignorant and turned my offer to take the comic on consignment. Still, it was quite a thrill to see a comic that old in such invredible condition.

Jay