Ken Kendrick Talks About His Altered Wagner

[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.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by Tomi

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

Yes and that's where some of the "info" about the card comes from. In the book it states that Sevchuk told Zimmerman that Ray's father purchased an uncut sheet at a Florida flea market but it also states in the book that years later when asked about it both Sevchuk and Ray refused to discuss the origin of the card.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Pat R

Yes and that's where some of the "info" about the card comes from. In the book it states that Sevchuk told Zimmerman that Ray's father purchased an uncut sheet at a Florida flea market but it also states in the book that years later when asked about it both Sevchuk and Ray refused to discuss the origin of the card.

Yeah I did not understand that, I mean why the cloak and dagger stuff? Especially when Ray was claiming that Mastro had cut the card.

[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..."

[Peter_Spaeth]

I find it very hard to believe that both David Hall and Bill Hughes believed that it was an unaltered, pack issued card.

[e107collector]

PSA grades the Wagner an 8, and the Plank counterpart an Authentic grade.

Interesting