T206 Honus Wagner that was on Ebay - thoughts?
 

The seller pulled the item a couple hours early because "it was sold." What are you thoughts on this card? The back looked good to me but the front looked like a fake. Is it likely reprint adhered to a real card?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Ho...vip=true&rt=nc

Damn, someone got a bargain.

It looks to me like a real back. But it doesn't seem to match the front of the card. My guess is that he scanned a real back, but not the back of the "Wagner." The corner wear doesn't match IMO, especially the top left corner.

it all looks fake to me.

Oh it is 100% real. No question. Why get an iconic and relatively- priceless card graded and marketed by a large AH, when you can sell it raw on eBay for $1100? Between the red Cobb BL 460 and now this Hans Wagner, the recent discovery and sale of these rare cards is truly remarkable. Can’t wait to see the next miracle. We are living in special times.

haha...it is the week of ebay miracles!!!!

haha...I didn't think there was any chance of it being real...just curious if you guys thought it was a reprint with a real back adhered to it or if you thought the whole thing was fake.

+1

Interesting that the seller has an original Modiglioni oil painting also on auction with purported provenance from Sothebys (no scan of such.) Imagine a Wagner and Modiglioni when his current inventory is nothing but low value coins. What a lucky fellow. Must have a fairy godmother.

What about the back looks fake? I'd like to learn what you guys are seeing that I'm missing. To my eye the back looks legit but the front looks fake as ever.

Other than when offered by a major auction house (REA comes to mind), an authentic T206 Wagner has never been auctioned on eBay.

Why the back is fake:

1. The color is too pink
2. The staining is artificial -- look at the left bottom edge and right bottom edge. You can see how the fibers that make up the card are darker. If you see a card that you think must be fake (e.g., a T206 Honus Wagner on ebay), always look for how the staining bleeds into the cracks of the surface and edges.
3. The corners (and you can see this on the front as well - especially top right and bottom left) were clipped with a scissors, and then rounded down by a thumb which caused uniform fraying at each corner.

Once you've handled hundreds of raw T206s and stared at them for hours at a time, all of these things and more will pop out to you immediately. Which is why you should not buy raw T206 cards worth over a couple of hundred bucks, at least until you've had a lot of experience handling them raw.

The front is just not what a T206 card looks like. The close-up of the eye should show a black dot matrix as the shadow.

Take a look at all the little black dots that make up the shadowing on this Hal Chase:

<img src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8445/29297144605_604e5cd655_o.jpg" width="1012" height="1645" alt="Chase_Pink_SGC_60"></a>

And instead what you see there is little white cracks, which were caused by the soaking in tea or whatever that was used to age the card. The surface of an authentic T206 would never crack like that.

It's a decent effort at a fake, all things told. But a fake nonetheless.

Didn't notice the Modigliani (in a $10 frame).

With items like these on eBay, just use common sense.

Even remote tribes in the Brazilian jungle know about the Honus Wagner card. So the seller would have done his research and either got it to PSA or SGC or to an auction house. I hate that crap like this clogs up Ebay. FAKE.

Wag
 

I love how he took the time to purchase a fake Wagner card so that he could show you the difference (using a loupe) between it and the "original" wags... More effort than getting the "real" one graded :rolleyes:

That's not true. A few years ago, a Net54 member had his legit one listed (graded by PSA) on ebay for about 400K. I recall he was displaying a lot of his T206 set on his office wall. I forget his name/user id.

true dat!

Powell displays his set on his wall, and I think he has the Wags.

I'll leave the answer to the lawyers on this board, but I think selling a forged Modigliani with fake documentation is the type of thing one goes to prison for.

Fake Wagner eye with loupe visible, real Tinker eye with loupe out of frame

Very nice comparison of a detail, the dot pattern, which always needs to be done with a loupe or other magnification.

Its a festivus miracle!

The lithographers did pretty good with what they had 109 years ago. I think that's one of the enduring traits of the set, careful early 20th century craftsmanship. The manufacturers undoubtedly would be surprised to find so many decent examples made it to the 21st century.

Has anyone contacted Jason Mars to ask his opinion on it?