Cobb/Edwards and the T206 Honus Wagner

[Brian-Chidester]

**IMO O'Keefe is much like Jose Canseco: painfully right about a lot of things that many powerful players in the hobby would prefer not to have the collecting base read about.**

Well, O'Keefe is a journalist, whereas Canseco was a player. If O'Keefe was a card dealer or grader, then they would accurately compare.

I think Canseco emerged as a much more anti-Capra/Rockwellian character, defying that all-American adage: "Don't snitch."

Doesn't mean he wasn't right. I've come to dislike the whole steroids lot so much that I admire Canseco for doing what perhaps no one else was willing to do.

[barrysloate]

Brian- I have no idea how they were treated, but the card is still fake. Their position with regard to this board was, who were we to pass judgment on the authenticity of their card? We tried to explain to them that many of the most advanced and knowledgeable people in the card collecting hobby congregate here, and if there was anybody who had the skill to determine whether or not it was real it was this group. But that wasn't good enough for them. Most of the people involved in the discussion got pretty agitated, myself included.

[Brian-Chidester]

Yeah, I read the entire thread a while back. Is there a place where a scan of their card can be viewed?

I believe I have every official Wagner T206 reprint, of which, a lot of the "scuffed-up" fakes come from. I might be able to identify which reprint their card comes from. Though in recent years, a lot of very good Wagner fakes have emerged that look much closer to the real thing than any previous "official" reprints did.

[glynparson]

http://www.bobconnelly.com/honuswagnert206.html

[Brian-Chidester]

Well, it's certainly not based on any "official" reprint, that's for sure. One thing you come to notice about many of the reprints is that they rely on a modern 4-color interlaced print technique, which unfortunately flattens out may of the features of the front portraits or action poses.

As far as the color of the actual Wagner portrait, this is much richer than the average reprint. No big revelation there, but that puts to bed whether this was a doctored up card that was readily reproduced. It's better than the "cheap Galasso reprint" that Mr. Mint passed it off as.

I know that many find the lack of a black line border around the portrait to be most troubling, besides the fact that it looks simply too crummy on both surfaces to have that nice of edges. The card certainly begs a lot of questions, but it does look better than I thought it was going to.

The font looks pretty black, though some T206s have a much darker brown text, which almost appears black.

[Leon]

Personally I think they were grasping for anything they could and the race card was low hanging fruit. They were idiots. Period. Black, white, green, brown, yellow.....color is blind on this issue, imo.

That card could have been owned by a Martian and it would still be fake (at least the front half of it). Even Joe O made a short video explaining why it wasn't good. They wouldn't listen because they were idiots. I don't think this situation had anything at all to do with race...though there is not much doubt that those two, or any person of color, might have previously experienced racism. That is just my take on it and others might think differently. regards

[Brian-Chidester]

Is that video posted somewhere?

[barrysloate]

I've always wondered if they knew all along it was no good, but simply loved all the publicity they were getting from it. They were on TV several times, and became minor celebrities for about 15 minutes. Perhaps in the end that was what it was all about. Could they really have believed that a grading service would switch cards on them? That doesn't even make sense. Maybe the whole thing was a put on...or they were really stupid. One or the other.