Every slabbed card has a story, don't it?

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

I thought that him and Rob L. saw / bought the original piece when it was a sheet (with other cards) in the early 1980's. I could be wrong on that.

If what you say is right, then maybe Bill's was a more "traditional" trim job, if the card resembled something like the Jumbo Wagner just with oversized borders when they got it.

In the book "The Card" it says that Bill Mastro gave Rob Lifson (who founded REA) a lesser Wagner (which Lifson sold weeks later for $30K) in exchange for $25K to buy the jumbo Wagner from a guy named Alan Ray who had consigned the card (along with an Eddie Plank and many others) to Bill Sevchuck, who owned a card store in Hicksville, NY.

The Wagner had wavy edges and a red printer's line at the top. Mastro apparently commented about the Wagner, "It's not cut right, but I'll take it off your hands."

After Mastro obtained the jumbo Wagner, he proceeded to trim it so that it had straight edges.

Alan Ray has never definitively said where he got the cards from, but at one point claimed it was a relative.