Ken Kendrick Talks About His Altered Wagner

[ajjohnsonsoxfan]

Great Video. Just a stunning card and collection. With extra love to the PSA 9 Cobb and JJ CJ's in the video. Good lord.

p.s. I don't mind Geoff Wilson. I appreciate his enthusiasm for the hobby.

[Tomi]

Originally Posted by ajjohnsonsoxfan

Great Video. Just a stunning card and collection. With extra love to the PSA 9 Cobb and JJ CJ's in the video. Good lord.

p.s. I don't mind Geoff Wilson. I appreciate his enthusiasm for the hobby.

Enthusiasm is one thing, but putting out videos telling people (especially kids) who to invest in while he has lost millions with his investments is very irresponsible.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Tomi

Enthusiasm is one thing, but putting out videos telling people (especially kids) who to invest in while he has lost millions with his investments is very irresponsible.

Is Gary Vee still out there?

[Tomi]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Is Gary Vee still out there?

Probably got bored and left.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Tomi

Probably got bored and left.

Yeah. Now influencing something else.

[Pat R]

There are so many stories about the card. What I found very intriguing is what Kendrick said he and the private investigator that he hired found in tracking the history of the card.

Alan Ray has never said who he got the card from but Kendrick said it belonged to a couple in Palm Beach Florida and it was in a shoe box with 30 other cards and after the husband passed away the wife was going to throw the cards out but an emplyee said that he wanted them and that employee was a relative of Alan Ray.

On the other hand Bill Mastro said that there were hundreds of other cards that were with the Wagner when he purchased it but who knows with him in his interview with Brian Gray he also said that his grandmother found a wagner in a shoebox that she had which I find very hard to believe.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Pat R

There are so many stories about the card. What I found very intriguing is what Kendrick said he and the private investigator that he hired found in tracking the history of the card.

Alan Ray has never said who he got the card from but Kendrick said it belonged to a couple in Palm Beach Florida and it was in a shoe box with 30 other cards and after the husband passed away the wife was going to throw the cards out but an emplyee said that he wanted them and that employee was a relative of Alan Ray.

On the other hand Bill Mastro said that there were hundreds of other cards that were with the Wagner when he purchased it but who knows with him in his interview with Brian Gray he also said that his grandmother found a wagner in a shoebox that she had which I find very hard to believe.

I thought the received wisdom is that Ray got it from his father who had found it at a Florida flea market. I don't understand how a p.i. hired 20 years after the fact would be in a position to uncover much of anything about a single baseball card.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I thought the received wisdom is that Ray got it from his father who had found it at a Florida flea market. I don't understand how a p.i. hired 20 years after the fact would be in a position to uncover much of anything about a single baseball card.

Yes that's one of the stories but in his interview Kendrick says that he has a pre-altered photo of the card that he got from the "people involved in the original sale of the card" so if that's true then he or the p.i. he hired must have talked to Ray or Sevchuk.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Pat R

Yes that's one of the stories but in his interview Kendrick says that he has a pre-altered photo of the card that he got from the "people involved in the original sale of the card" so if that's true then he or the p.i. he hired must have talked to Ray or Sevchuk.

Maybe Ray fibbed about it back in the day and made up the story about his father, and later decided to come clean perhaps with the p.i. promising it was only to be revealed to Kendrick? Who knows. In any event, there's nothing still back beyond the 1980s.

[Tomi]

Has anyone read the book on the PSA 8 Wagner "The Card"? Wondering what info it provides that hasn't been discussed here.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Maybe Ray fibbed about it back in the day and made up the story about his father, and later decided to come clean perhaps with the p.i. promising it was only to be revealed to Kendrick? Who knows. In any event, there's nothing still back beyond the 1980s.

This whole story is interesting if you compare the recent Kendrick video (Mastro BAD) with Bill's podcast interview that (if I recall) was only a few months ago.

Bill paints this innocent picture of wanting to keep the card for himself, and using a paper cutter (which he still owns, BTW) to change the shape from an oblong "football" of a card off some huge uncut sheet into the precise and razor sharp item that eventually became Gretzky's PSA 8. It was all very above board, innocent, and hey back then nobody knew much or cared about things like trimming or alteration anyway, right? Jim Copeland didn't care about trimming or apparently even ask any questions when Mastro sold him the pre-PSA card back in the late 1980's.

Since then of course, due to Mastro's other (real) serious problems with shill bidding and federal prison - it's been all too easy I think just to consider him the bad guy with the Wagner too. But was he really? I've seen others on this board who consider PSA crooks from the word go, saying David Hall himself was a known card doctor who wished to profit further from that with his grading company - and that the whole thing with the Wagner was a big conspiracy from the beginning.

Interesting in this, Ken's position is all "Poor PSA, they got duped, they didn't know..."

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Tomi

Enthusiasm is one thing, but putting out videos telling people (especially kids) who to invest in while he has lost millions with his investments is very irresponsible.

Totally agreed. I've tried, but it's hard to not see Wilson as a bit of a slimeball. His previous "investments" that are all on the ocean floor right now with the Titanic somehow seem to get conveniently ignored. Maybe he does some good somewhere in other spheres, but from what I've seen when the videos get specific - he is painfully unfamiliar with most vintage cards, and on the other side from what I can tell his stuff seems to be mostly all about money.