I sold a T-206 Wagner ....25 years ago!

[Cardboard Junkie]

No, I don't have a picture of that card. I consigned it to them too late to be included in thier catalog. I believe my brother has a picture of us holding the card but at such a distance you can't see any details.
S. C. D. wrote an article about a few of my cards at the time my T cards and extreme rarities like the Glendale Houtteman card and uncataloged one of a kind cabinets etc. dave.

[barrysloate]

The seller claims he sold his Wagner in 1987, but the DuMouchelles sale Corey is citing was 1991. That auction had the most comprehensive collection of baseball books the hobby has ever seen. It was consigned to them because the family lived nearby. Never in the history of auctions has an auction company known less about the material they were selling. They never did one iota of research, and got nearly every description wrong. But most of the books still did well in spite of the simply dreadful catalog.

But those Wagners in the 1991 sale weren't real, and when it was pointed out to the auction house, their response was they didn't care, and the buyers didn't seem to care either. You have to love it!

[benjulmag]

Barry is quite correct. When the second Wagner was substituted, at the viewing thre was quite a scene when a number of the people there emphatically told the owner of the auction house that the second Wagner was absolutely positively a fake, and they gave their reasons why. Yet the card was sold anyway. Some years prior SCD I believe published an issue with a repro Wagner inserted, a darn good one as repros go. And as I remember it was that repro that was sold.

[Mikehealer]

What happened with the reprint sale? Did it go through?

[barrysloate]

When someone spoke to the auction house, and it may have been Corey, they claimed the buyer was happy with his purchase. Please don't ask me to explain it, I can't.

[benjulmag]

Of course the buyer was happy with his purchase -- he thought it was real. This was before the days of slabbing, so unless the buyer got wind of the commotion at the viewing, how would he know he was buying a fake? While the card was clearly a repro to one with expertise in the field, that probably did not appy to a significant number of potential bidders, whose guards were presumably down because they had no reason to suspect the card was a fake. DuMouchelles, though not known as an auctioneer of baseball items, was still a recognized and reputable auction house (perhaps the largest in the Detroit area). So why would prospective bidders believe they might be buying a fake? The scene at the viewing was almost surrealistic. I mean here was an auction house with no expertise in baseball items being told by a number of recognized experts that the card had no chance of being real. Yet the auction house refused to pull it. Perhaps having already pulled one Wagner, they thought they would be the laughing stock of the auction world if they got it wrong the second time. The saddest part of this story is that it is not unique to DuMouchelles (e.g., "Creighton" tintype).

[Mikehealer]

That's crazy not to mention criminal. Makes you wonder how many times this sort of thing has happened over the years.