Ray may have been lying for some reason, but he is the only actual primary source I have ever seen able to recount the origin. His testimony appears to be the only actual evidence. I have been told there is some evidence of the Long Island origin but nobody is able to produce it when questioned about what it is. So strange.
Mastro was obviously guilty of very serious criminal fraud. Imperfect is putting it far too lightly. But criminal fraud is not seen as a big deal in this hobby for some reason ($$$), so I guess that is not a big problem. What's wrong with having auctions and auction houses run by convicted fraudsters? Nothing!
The 'trimming' is kind of irrelevant, since it was cut by hand from a "sheet" (deductively, almost certainly not an actual sheet, perhaps a panel or strip). Its only added value is that the card was effectively cut illegitimately twice and PSA still pretends it's an 8, adding to the comic absurdity of their money-printing claim to this day. If a corporation says up is down, this hobby will decide that up is close enough to down that it is fine as long as money can be made.
A card that is altered in reality is... altered, independent of any single person's knowledge of said alteration. Not being caught doing something does not mean that thing did not in actual objective reality ever happen or it somehow does not count.
The real tragedy of the saga is that possibly the only piece of uncut material from the set production runs to survive to modernity was destroyed without any documentation of the layout, size, what was on it, etc. There are only a handful of uncut T strips/sheets/panels that anyone can show (mostly Obak), and none for T206. Some other T sheets we know survived to modernity have been destroyed, like the T25 sheet and the T204 sheet.
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10-18-2024, 04:15 PM
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