Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Leon

Yes.
There is no alternate reality in my world.
And if a card is altered and no one detects it, it's still altered. And I fully understand that is not the way it is in the hobby for many, if not most.

So what you are saying is that there just may be no way to know whether or not many cards are altered. Even if we suspect they aren’t, and reside in numbered PSA slabs.


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[Leon]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

So what you are saying is that there just may be no way to know whether or not many cards are altered. Even if we suspect they aren’t, and reside in numbered PSA slabs.


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Sure. I think some trimming can't be detected. But what I was saying is, it's still trimmed.
For the record, Bill Hughes, who actually graded the card, said it was an 8 to him and he didn't know a backstory. That's what he's told me.
I enjoyed the interview. Thanks for posting it, Peter.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Leon

Sure. I think some trimming can't be detected. But what I was saying is, it's still trimmed.
For the record, Bill Hughes, who actually graded the card, said it was an 8 to him and he didn't know a backstory. That's what he's told me.
I enjoyed the interview. Thanks for posting it, Peter.

I don't disagree. I just think it's hard to analyze the thought process by which we acknowledge that an item might be altered, but in some cases have zero ability to prove it.

The discrepancies between this interview and some of what has come to be the accepted lore of the card (i.e., the 30-for-30 short "Holy Grail", that ESPN did with Keith Olbermann and others a decade or so ago...) is that here you have Mastro saying it's "one of the larger" Wagners that exists. And everyone in the older interviews are saying it's short, up to 1/16 short, and that's how they knew it was sheet cut or trimmed and not factory.

Which is true?

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

I don't disagree. I just think it's hard to analyze the thought process by which we acknowledge that an item might be altered, but in some cases have zero ability to prove it.

The discrepancies between this interview and some of what has come to be the accepted lore of the card (i.e., the 30-for-30 short "Holy Grail", that ESPN did with Keith Olbermann and others a decade or so ago...) is that here you have Mastro saying it's "one of the larger" Wagners that exists. And everyone in the older interviews are saying it's short, up to 1/16 short, and that's how they knew it was sheet cut or trimmed and not factory.

Which is true?

Can't they both be true? Mastro claimed in the interview to not have touched the top and bottom borders. According to him, whoever cut it from the sheet cut it that size, but left massive borders on the left and right, which he then trimmed. So the card could be short, and still have wide borders on the sides.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

Can't they both be true? Mastro claimed in the interview to not have touched the top and bottom borders. According to him, whoever cut it from the sheet cut it that size, but left massive borders on the left and right, which he then trimmed. So the card could be short, and still have wide borders on the sides.

I suppose that's true. Neither Mastro or Olbermann / O'Keefe in that other thing I referred to said specifically how it was either too big or too small (horizontal v. vertical, or both). The ESPN video seemed to insinuate it wasn't wide enough, but that may have just been my perception.

The thing I had not questioned really before watching this new Mastro interview, was how many people were really concerned about the size of cards the way we are now in the late 80's and early 90's? I was a kid in the hobby then, but was collecting "old" (the term vintage was not yet really applied to cards then) cards voraciously, and I can tell you that would not have been a question I would have thought to ask in 1990. Unless the card just obviously presented cut or small. I hear that and think well, probably Jim Copeland never asked Mastro anything like that. Maybe Sotheby's didn't either - hell, probably. They didn't know anything about cards.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Leon

Sure. I think some trimming can't be detected. But what I was saying is, it's still trimmed.
For the record, Bill Hughes, who actually graded the card, said it was an 8 to him and he didn't know a backstory. That's what he's told me.
I enjoyed the interview. Thanks for posting it, Peter.

Leon, as we've discussed, at least according to O'Keeffe, he said he knew it was sheet cut/trimmed.

I still don't understand the emphasis in the popular lore on the trimming as opposed to it being sheet/strip cut. It was never worthy of a number grade.

[Leon]

I am only stating what Bill told me told about 2-3? yrs ago.

As for Okeefe, he completely misquoted Chris Ivy on purpose, in an article concerning me selling my collection, by putting a period (or comma, I forget) in a sentence, changing the meaning. Before that, I had no issue with him. After that, I had no use for him or his reporting.

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Leon, as we've discussed, at least according to O'Keeffe, he said he knew it was sheet cut/trimmed.

I still don't understand the emphasis in the popular lore on the trimming as opposed to it being sheet/strip cut. It was never worthy of a number grade.