The Cincinnati Wagner "Graded"

[Rich Klein]

Presented without comment


Cinci Duo Finally Gets Wagner Card Slabbed

It's been beaten up. Dragged through the mud. Cursed. Reviled. Verbally spanked.

And that's just speaking metaphorically.



The Honus Wagner baseball card Ray Edwards and John Cobb own is still in the same shape it was in when they say it was uncovered at an estate sale years ago, but the community of mainstream authenticators and collectors are convinced it's just another in a long line of fakes.



Nothing has deterred the duo from trying to get someone to say it dates from the same early 20th time period as the real Wagners that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.



Finally, they found a company to do just that.



ACA Grading, based in St-Jerome, Quebec, met with the men recently and after examining the card, decided it was an "unreleased version" of the hobby's most famous trading card, issued in 1909 and then recalled after objections by Wagner.



A story in the New York Daily News says ACA agreed to let the two owners be present during the evaluation. Cobb and Edwards claim they didn't want it to be encapsulated alone and, thus, steered clear of the hobby's mainstream authenticators.


Here is the story from the New York Daily News


T206 Honus Wagner card finally gets a stamp of approval, but controversy lingers


The two Cincinnati men who have spent many frustrating years trying to prove their T206 Honus Wagner is legitimate have finally gotten their baseball card authenticated.

But the collectors and dealers who have ripped Ray Edwards and John Cobb as hucksters peddling a counterfeit card will probably not apologize anytime soon.

Edwards and Cobb submitted their card to ACA Grading, a little-known authentication service based in Quebec, which labeled the card "authentic."



"It is what we call an unreleased version of the card," said ACA Grading owner Martin Brouillard. "It is a controversial card, and people are scared of it."



Edwards and Cobb have refused to submit their card to any of the three biggest grading services -- Professional Sports Authentication, Beckett and SportsCard Guaranty -- because those companies would not allow them to be present when their cards are evaluated.



The companies say that policy is necessary because they don't want collectors trying to influence the grades their cards receive. Cobb and Edwards say the policy sounds reasonable for cards worth a few dollars, but the companies should make exceptions for a card potentially worth millions of dollars.



Brouillard said he graded the card "authentic," rather than giving it a numeral grade, because he permitted Edwards to be present when he examined the card, and because fibers have been taken from the collectible.



Brouillard based his grade in part on research done by paper expert Walter Rantanen, who examined the card in 2003 at the request of Edwards and Cobb and concluded the paper stock was consistent "with being from 1910." Brouillard also relied in part on printing expert Arnie Schwed, who also examined the card for Edwards and Cobb and said it was definitely not a counterfeit.



Collectors say the card appears to be a fake because it looks dull and discolored. There is no black border around the picture of Wagner, and Wagner's name at the bottom looks different than it does on other T206 cards. Memorabilia industry executives, most notably PSA's Joe Orlando and Bill Mastro, whose now-defunct Mastro Auctions is at the center of an FBI fraud investigation, have called the card a fake.



Brouillard says the card may have been a print test for production, or a first printing that was scrapped.



Brouillard's opinion isn't likely to satisfy the critics of Edwards and Cobb. Without a stamp of approval from one of the mainstream grading services, Edwards and Cobb probably won't sell their card.



But it's not like the mainstream grading services and authenticators are unimpeachable. The T206 Wagner once owned by NHL superstar Wayne Gretzky, purchased in 2007 for $2.7 million by Arizona Diamondbacks managing general partner Ken Kendrick, was given an "8" by PSA even though one of the graders says he knew the card was trimmed when he examined it in 1991. The card grader, Bill Hughes, acknowledged that the Wagner was trimmed during an interview for "The Card," a 2007 book written by two Daily News reporters.