Interesting article from 1944
 

This article was a piece in a collection I just purchased and I thought it was worth sharing. Interesting that there were apparently only two T206 Wagners known at the time and both were valued at the staggering sum of $20-$25. Article is from the March 12, 1944 edition of the Philadelphia Record.

Thanks for sharing
 

Thanks for sharing Marc. I think information flowed fairly slowly in the card collecting of the 1940's...The 1943 ACC Supplement has the Wagner and Plank each valued at the whopping sum of $2.00. Great article and thanks again for showing it.

Do we know which Wagner was the Bray Wagner? I recall one having a similar diamond cut.

not me
 

The Bray Wagner was a hand cut one with a Piedmont back. A very nice and low profile board member owns it. It was sold by Mastro, with a letter of provenance, in 2001.

very cool. Thanks for sharing. I love how it ties in with Leon's CCBs as well since they mention the monthly bulletin after the part with the Burdick quotes. Fantastic. I eat up this history stuff.

For many many years, the problem was not the value it was simply that no one was willing to sell the cards at the low value quoted. It just wasn't worth the trouble.

I really enjoy reading these old articles. Thank you.

My memory could be failing me, but I thought that Bray purchased the Piedmont Wagner in the 1950s (from a letter of inquiry in 1956?). I can check my old Mastro catalog later on that. That Piedmont Wagner was much more obviously hand-cut than the one shown in the article which is attributed to Bray. Maybe the Piedmont one was his second.
JimB

same one...I think
 

The letter/envelope was dated April, 1958 and I believe that is the same card in the picture above.....It was more wavy on the left side (as looking at it and can't be seen in the article above) than the right side. From my understanding only that one and the Gretzky (hand cut) PSA 8 have Piedmont backs.

Leon,
If he were offered the Piedmont one in a letter dated to 1958, how could that be it depicted in a 1944 article?

I think you are right about the Piedmonts being hand/sheet cut. I think the same is true for Piedmont Planks (I think there are only three of them.).
JimB

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/1742/brayletter1.jpg
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8122/brayletter2.jpg

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/207...dmontfront.jpghttp://img683.imageshack.us/img683/4...edmontback.jpg

If you look at the top right corner of the two cards, you can quickly see that the one in the newspaper article is not this Piedmont Wagner Bray purchased in 1958.
JImB

osmosis!! Actually, I wasn't thinking and you are correct, however that right side of the one you posted isn't as bad as the left side (as looking at it) and that is what I was referring to. I obviously wasn't thinking about the faulty timeline.

edited to add that it obviously must be a different Wags in the article in the original post.