Top T206 Wagner's in existence (according to Legendary)

[glchen]

Legendary has started the private sale of the Dreier collection. Link

One thing that I found interesting was the listing and ownership of the top T205 Wagner's right now. Copying their blurb:

The Dreier Collection’s Wagner ranks firmly in the Top 10 of the 50 to 100 such Holy Grails in existence. Thus, it belongs to that supremely prestigious Million-Dollar Card Club that began with the famous seven-figure sale of the so-called Gretzky Wagner back in 2000.

More definitively, if we trace the hierarchy of all prominent, documented T206 Wagners according to their grades and lineage, we believe the Dreier Wagner unquestionably positions itself as high as Number 8:

1. PSA NM-MT 8: Bill Mastro → Jim Copeland → Wayne Gretzky/Bruce McNall → Mike Gidwitz/Rob Lifson → Brian Siegel → Private Investor

(I believe the private invester is the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Ken Kendrick according to an article in PSA's SMR magazine.)

2. Borderline NM (and oversized): Lew Lipset → Mastro → Barry Halper → Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown

3. EX+ or slightly better (with strong corners): Richard Gelman → Corey Shanus

4. PSA EX 5: Leland’s → Mastro → Scott Ireland

5. PSA EX 5 MC (“jumbo”-sized): Mastro → John Rogers

6. EX: Mastro → Dr. Robert Goode → Mark Macrae

7. EX: Larry Fritsch

8. VG-EX 4: The Dreier Collection

9. EX appearance (but adhered to an album page): Jefferson Burdick → Metropolitan Museum of Art.

---

What do people think of this? Looks correct?

[barrysloate]

What happened to collector privacy? Past owners are typically cited with regards to an object's provenance, but some of those current owners might not want their name out there.

[bbcard1]

Barry, as much as it may be a negative thing, privacy does not exist in the internet age. We have met Big Brother and we are it.

[e107collector]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

What happened to collector privacy? Past owners are typically cited with regards to an object's provenance, but some of those current owners might not want their name out there.

I'm pretty sure your statemnt was brought up when Mastro had their live auction with the Jumbo Wagner in 2008. They had an almost identical write up.

If I remember correctly, they did that without any sort of consent from the collectors.

Tony

[ullmandds]

IT seems kinda odd to me that 3 of the top 8-10 or so t206 wagners are described as "jumbo"...or oversized?

[bbcard1]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

IT seems kinda odd to me that 3 of the top 8-10 or so t206 wagners are described as "jumbo"...or oversized?

And at least one has been described by some at "trimboed"....

[barrysloate]

The internet age has nothing to do with privacy in this regard. These owners did not have that information out there. Legendary knew who they were and posted their names. I spoke to one of the people on that list after it was first revealed and he was not happy. He in turn spoke to a second member on it who was equally unhappy. The names of the owners of the top Wagners were never on the internet.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

IT seems kinda odd to me that 3 of the top 8-10 or so t206 wagners are described as "jumbo"...or oversized?

Peter - it actually makes sense. I doubt any Wagner cards actually made it into production. If there are only 50-100 in existence, how many were printed? Did they print a few dozen sheets, release them into production (put them in packs), then send the representative to broker a deal with Wagner? I doubt it. If they were going to do that, they would have printed many more cards first. I think they knew selling Wagner was going to be tough (for reasons unknown to us), so they never released those sheets. Most of them, if not all, were hand-cut, resulting in all the jumbos (and former jumbos) that we see now, and they ended up in the hands of employees and friends. In other words, they had the production process ready in case he said 'yes', but he didn't.

[wonkaticket]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Peter - it actually makes sense. I doubt any Wagner cards actually made it into production. If there are only 50-100 in existence, how many were printed? Did they print a few dozen sheets, release them into production (put them in packs), then send the representative to broker a deal with Wagner? I doubt it. If they were going to do that, they would have printed many more cards first. I think they knew selling Wagner was going to be tough (for reasons unknown to us), so they never released those sheets. Most of them, if not all, were hand-cut, resulting in all the jumbos (and former jumbos) that we see now, and they ended up in the hands of employees and friends. In other words, they had the production process ready in case he said 'yes', but he didn't.

Scott I disagree with you here, Wagner and Plank in the Sweet Cap most likely made it into production in some shape or form.

The fact that so few survived is not a good indication of did something go into production or not. We have tons of cards that are way more obscure and in less numbers than the T206 Wagner that we know were put into production and distribution J=K Candy Cards, T208 Fireside, E221, T215 Pirate the list could go on and on.

The Jumbo oversized is combo of two things IMO. One more of these cards have been tucked away in long time older collections and hacked less. Two back in the day oversized T206’s were common place I had finds of thousands of cards and held and bought many more. Back in those days raw super sized cards with big borders top and bottom sometimes both were very common.



In fact old school collectors use to trim the bottoms of these cards to fit them in the early sheets ughh like my old Magie that I sold to a board member.



Why do you not see many of these “jumbo” T206’s today? Where did many of these super sized T206’s go you ask?Just check your PSA set reg for the many PSA8’s and 9’s sad but true big bordered T206’s are like the white rhino of the card world along with others.

Just my two cents but what do I know I’m a hack and I don’t even have a website.

Cheers,

John

P.S. I see nothing wrong with what Legendary did in giving provenance and background calling out a significant auction of a special card. It happens in the art world all the time. They did a very good job of giving good info for the potential buyers while being respectful of current owners IMO.