The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card | 
| Authors: Michael O'keeffe, Teri Thompson
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 174687
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0061123935
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780061123931
ASIN: 0061123935
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
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Product Description
Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to still exist, having been released in limited numbers just after the turn of the twentieth century. Most, with their creases and stains, look like they've been around for nearly one hundred years. But one—The Card—appears to have defied the travails of time. Its sharp corners and still-crisp portrait make it the single-most famous—and most desired—baseball card on the planet, valued today at more than two million dollars. It has transformed a simple hobby into a billion-dollar industry that is at times as lawless as the Wild West. Everything about The Card, which has made men wealthy as well as poisoned lifelong relationships, is fraught with controversy—from its uncertain origins to the nagging possibility that it might not be exactly as it seems. In this intriguing, eye-opening, and groundbreaking look at a uniquely American obsession, award-winning investigative reporters Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson follow The Card's trail from a Florida flea market to the hands of the world's most prominent collectors. The Card sheds a fascinating new light on a world of counterfeiters, con men, and the people who profit from what used to be a pastime for kids.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 A breezy read on an intriguing mystery August 9, 2008
The story of the world's most expensive baseball card, the T206 Honus Wagner PSA 8 NM-MT, isn't very complicated. Unearthed in 1985, it has changed owners a handful of times, netting each one a tidy profit. Its whereabouts for its first 75 years of existence are unknown. The reasons for its rarity have been speculated on, but are ultimately unknown. Whether the card has been trimmed somewhere along the way, a big no-no in the card collecting world and, if ever determined to be true, would permanently mar the hobby, is unknown. While O'Keeffe and Thompson perform an admirable job of attempting to answer these unknowns in The Card, the reader is ultimately left unfulfilled.
What the authors do accomplish, however, is the painting of a vivid picture of the high end of sports card and memorabilia collecting. From the eccentric personalities involved to the back-room dealings to the heinous manipulation of items considered by some to be national or historic treasures, The Card lays it all out in unflinching detail. The king of the hill is Bill Mastro, the uber-dealer whose involvement has touched just about every sale of the Wagner. Surrounding him are other prominent collectors and dealers, some on his side, others attempting to dethrone him. While the authors exhibit a bias in who is "good" and "evil" in this fight, astute readers will recognize universal themes in this battle and be able to make their own judgments on motives. Like the question of whether the Wagner has been trimmed, the heroes and villains in this story are not clear-cut. What is clear, however, is that what used to be a fun hobby for boys and men with a touch of OCD has become commoditized by skyrocketing prices. Along with this commoditization comes all of its associated evils: all-encompassing greed, hubris, the destruction of national treasures. Ultimately, this unfortunate revelation will be The Card's final legacy.
Written in a light journalistic style, The Card is easy leisure time reading and can be finished in a single sitting. While a bit erratic in detail -- the sections on Wagner's life as a player seem scant, while too much time is spent on the purported Wagner card owned by Ray Edwards and John Cobb -- the narration nonetheless flows easily from one topic to the next. Longtime hobbyists will probably find very little new information in The Card, though, and may even be distracted by easily quashable errors such as Alan Ray's assertion that the red printer's mark present when he owned the Wagner is now missing. However, this book was more than likely not written for hardcore collectors; its target audience being laymen with a passing interest in the hobby and its most expensive artifact. That being said, though, The Card does provide a decent aggregation of many of the tidbits of information on the Wagner that have been scattered amongst Internet message boards and whisper-filled back rooms. Advanced hobbyists may find it useful for that reason, although the lack of an index may at the same time hinder it. All in all, The Card is a decent book for card collectors' reference shelves, and as an exciting read for everyday folks.
SO WHAT If It's Hand Cut? July 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
First, let me say that this is, by far, the single greatest book ever written about the history of collecting. Even if you're not into cards, this book is a fast read which you absolutely will not be able to put down.
THAT BEING SAID, I strongly disagree with the very premise that a card which was hand-cut from a production sheet is somehow worthless.
THE Card is supposed to be "fake" or "worthless" because it has been "altered" or "trimmed". This is because it is designated PSA 8 NM-MT when PSA normally refuses to grade hand-cut cards.
In other words, PSA violates their own rules. I submit that it's not THE Card which is fake. It's PSA's RULES. They should get over their bias against hand-cut cards from production sheets and start grading them, the way they grade strip cards from the 1920's and 1930's.
99% of the vintage trading cards in existence were cut by machine at the factory. However, there were some cards which still existed as uncut sheets when collectors started getting into old cardboard back in the 1970's and 1980's.
Some cards were distributed to the public as uncut sheets only. This was mostly in the 1920's through the 1940's. These cards are called "strip cards". You can see examples if you search eBay for "w551". Once in a while, you'll even see an intact uncut sheet from the 1920's in collector's circles.
PSA will grade a strip card which was hand cut, no problem. If the margins are fully intact, they'll give it a numeric grade. If the card has been cut into the margins, they'll give it the dreaded "authentic". Either way, PSA provides a valuable service by doing so. Either way, a strip card is not considered to be a "Fake" or "Altered" in any way.
What PSA refuses to do is this: let's say a card like a T206 or 1933 Goudey was distributed to the public in machine-cut form. If you happen to run across an uncut sheet of those cards and cut them out of the sheet, no matter how neatly, no matter how perfectly, PSA will refuse to grade your card.
Well, I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. I've seen some absolutely beautiful hand-cut cards in my time. The cards are just as old, just as rare, just as desirable. The pictures are the same. They came off the same printing press. They are REAL, genuine, authentic, historically significant, and any true collector should be proud to own one.
A good example is the 1944 American Beauties trading card set. This was a non-sports series of World War II pin-up cards by famed artist Gil Elvgren. Most were distributed in packs of 12 cards. There were only 24 cards in the set, so each pack contained 1/2 the set.
HOWEVER, they were also distributed as strips of 6. You'll sometimes run across uncut sheets on the internet, and you'll sometimes run across neatly hand-trimmed examples of the cards. Genuine cards. From 1944. Identical in every respect to the cards from the packs, except for the trimming.
Submit one of these cards to PSA, and they'll return the card. Mind you, they keep the $15 or $25 grading fee. But your card will be treated with about the same amount of respect usually reserved for those who murder puppies.
In my opinion, that's just wrong. PSA makes the rules and PSA enforces the rules. The author of this book makes a compelling case that the most famous baseball card in the world was hand-cut from a production sheet. And he says it's "artificial" because that violates PSA's rules. The card isn't artificial. The RULES are artificial. So change the rules.
 Deal or No Deal July 22, 2008
A person may have never collected one baseball card, but the T206 Wagner transcends that industry. And with any item worth millions of dollars, the pop culture publicity surrounding it has been a curse and a blessing.
Authors Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson take the reader on a wild ride of the history of the Honus Wagner tobacco card through the fiction that has oftentimes shuffled the facts to the clubhouse and the legacy of "The Card," the ultimate T206 that is worth at least $2 million.
From cards as fake as the slimy smiles of a con-man to the high-stakes game in the art of the deal to obtain the ultimate collectible, the story is a home run that is hammered out of the stadium.
What a page-turner! July 14, 2008
Wow! What a page-turner! Finished this in roughly 24 hours, something I haven't done in a long time.
I haven't been interested in baseball cards since I was about 13, and I haven't been interested in baseball too much in the past ten years, but this book brought me right back to where I was in my youth.
The book reads like a murder mystery that keeps you hooked, and tells all sorts of history about old time baseball cards, card collectors, Honus Wagner himself, and unfortunately all the card crooks found within the hobby.
Highly recommended!!
I've wasted my life July 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I spent most of the 1980s collecting baseball cards. I started with the complete 1977 - 1979 Topps sets, collected for me by my dad as a failed attempt at giving me an inheritance. Most of what I bought and traded for later I stored in shoeboxes (the 1980 Topps set is in the cigar box that originally heralded my sister's birth). My mother never threw my cards away; I still have them all, many creased from having been transported to summer camp in my pockets.
"The Card" is a fast, revealing read, and having lived the collector's life (in a penny-ante kind of way) I can say this is a must-read book for those of us over a certain age. It seizes on a single surviving 1909 T206 Honus Wagner card that recently re-sold at private auction for nearly $3 million, and how, through years of investigative journalism, the authors have fairly well proven that the card is not exactly what it purports to be.
Apart from the hours I wasted cataloguing and re-cataloguing my meager collections (I once traded the 1977 Chris Chambliss for a 1983 tandem of Ed Lynch and Dave LaRoche; dumb, dumb move) I've never spent a million bucks on a card of dubious provenance. I once laid down $10 for a 1957 Topps Luis Aparicio, too big to fit into the 9-card-per-page collector sheets that housed lots of 1987 Mark McGwires and Garbage Pail Kids at the time.
"The Card" is a terrific look at the dark side of the hobby. Since many of those noted as "villains" by the author declined to be profiled, the book mostly features interviews with collectors who've left the hobby out of heartbreak, or those who run honorable and transparent businesses trying to clean it back up. It's not just about baseball cards: it also touches on the grey market for "game-used" bats, autographs, jerseys and gloves. Billy Crystal makes a poignant cameo late in the story: he spent a quarter of a million collars on an item that isn't what he thought it was.
At a card show last year I got autographs on two memorable cards: Bake McBride signed his afro on the '80s Topps card, and Alvin Dark signed for me his 1955 Bowman TV-set image. I will not be selling these items. Neither card is in near-mint to mint condition, as is the profiled T206 Wagner; neither card is particularly rare; and I got them signed for sentimental value, not for investment purposes.
Confession, however: I did once trim a baseball card. This is part of a run of dubious practices, made easier with the advent of newer technology, where dog-eared cards are made crisp, and where aging borders are pared back to their original white and pristine state. In early 1983 a Junior Scholastic-type magazine I got in the mail came with an uncut partial sheet of eight 1982 Topps cards (I do have a mis-cut, from-the-pack 1980 Topps John Candelaria that's probably worth nothing). Being nine and having never seen an uncut sheet before, I promptly grabbed my safety scissors and got to work liberating the cards from their unified tyranny. Mangled all the cards in the process. Including the Orioles Future Stars card. With Cal Ripken, Jr. on it. To be fair, at the time I couldn't have known I was cutting up a card that, thanks to the hobby's implosion, probably isn't worth more than 20 bucks today, if that.
One final note: the story of the T206 Wagner and its dubious rise to 7-figure investment property, opens in 1985 in a baseball card shop in Hicksville, New York. This is the same Long Island town that for 20 years unknowingly housed the Gospel of Judas. My mother (and all my baseball cards) currently reside in Hicksville. I'm going back to my collection one day and maybe see if I don't have a T206 Wagner myself sitting somewhere in that fated locale.
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