Hi Guys:
My story is probably different than most, in that the first card I had from the set was a Wagner.
I had been collecting "in the hobby" for about 10 years, and had been mostly concentrating on Post War cards, Topps, Regionals etc.
However I was at the Troy Mi. (Detroit) Convention in 1974 when word came that Mike Aronstein had turned up a Wagner card back in Long Island. In those days there was an auction at the shows. Supposedly the owner of the card would not sell it to Mike, but when Mike mentioned the show and the auction, it was agreed that Mike would call the convention and have it auctioned off sight unseen.
I had just received my income tax return of $600 so I had money to burn!! :>) The conventions were more just a bunch of guys getting together and having a table as a base of operations. When I caught wind that the Wagner card was going to be auctioned, I sold my entire table to someone ( don't recall who) for another $600.
Andy Sandler recently was kind enough to send me a copy of an article from the 7/5/74 issue of Sports Collectors News I had never seen. See attached below. It tells some of the story. A few things I forgot, like who I was bidding against at the end. Dr. Joe Michalowicz, ( boy did they have a bunch of T200 premiums!!) And one thing was incorrect. I did not get the Wagner in the mail. Rather I am my traveling companion drove straight to Mike Aronstein's house to pick up the Wagner after stopping first at Frank Nagy's house to buy the rest of the set.
In the 70's the big thing at the time was to put your cards on the sticky pages with the light plastic film over top. The only photo I have of the card is shown below in an old Polaroid SX-70 photo. It is so old it is cracking!!
I later sold the card and the rest of my collection to Barry Halper. I always wondered what happened to my Wagner, as in all the subsequent years I never saw it offered again until a few years back when it appeared in a Goodwin auction:
https://goodwinandco.com/LotDetail.a...entoryid=19548
Boy it would be nice to have that $1.2 Million now!!
It was easy to tell it was the one I had as I recall the crease in the upper right corner. Anyone here own it now? If so and you want "the rest of the story" ala Paul Harvey ( google him young fellows) PM and I would be glad to discuss.
Fred