Honus Wagner baseball card sells for $2.8 Million

[spyboy1]

"A rare Honus Wagner baseball card has been sold for a record $2.8 million, just more than six months after it was bought for a then-record $2.35 million."

The interesting thing about this famous Wagner card, is that a recent book has been published, calling into question many aspects of the origin of the card, if it's been doctored, and the validity of it's authentication.

The book, "The Card" has claimed that the card originated from an uncut sheet of t-206 cards and was cut from the sheet, rather poorly, with a pair of scissors. They then go onto accuse the buyer of doctoring the card by trimming the edges with a scalpel to square it up and sharpen the corners, both fact which would do incredible harm to the value of the card.

The book then goes on to accuse the grading service PSA, who gave the card, then under ownership of then LA Kings owner Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky , of grading the card, the very first card their service ever graded, even knowing it was trimmed and cut from a sheet in order to put their company on the map and garner the massive publicity of having authenticated the world's most valuable and famous card - a giant conflict of interest or at least a massive compromise in the rules and values their company was supposed to hold to as an independent arbiter of card condition and authenticity.

There is apparently "before and after" photos showing the card after it had been cut from the sheet, but before it had been trimmed.

more detailed and read of the card's history and questionable origins can be found in this article.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball...ant_cut_it.html

The one thing I have never heard discussed is where did the uncut sheet come from? There is no known example of a T-206 uncut sheet, and had the original owners simply left that intact, complete with a Wagner and even more rare Eddie Plank card, it would have dwarfed the value of the Wagner by itself.