Revisiting the T206 Wagner "strip"

[E93]

I also viewed the strip at the National under a loupe. Ted and I discussed this at the show and we disagree. It seemed clear to me that the lines between cards were printed. I do not believe separate cards were pasted onto the strip. In my opinion, it was a test run. This particular one was sent to Wagner to try to entice him to sign on with the project by showing him how good they looked. Meanwhile, I think that back at ALC, they looked at what was potentially a final product and decided to make some further changes after the sample sent to Wagner. Color changes were made to some cards in what would be final production decisions.

In my opinion, it does not make sense that they would cut cards off a sheet and then paste them back together. If it was sent to Wagner to impress him and convince him to sign on, why not just send him cut up cards? Why paste them back onto a sheet? I think they just cut a strip off of a sheet in the place that included Wagner's own image. They included a few others adjacent to his to give him a better sense of the set as a whole. It was close enough to a final production stage that the changes that might be made later (like adding color) would be relatively inconsequential in terms of giving Wagner a sense of what the cards would look like in general.

Of course this is speculation, but it is based on quite a bit of information and a close inspection of the piece under a 10X loupe at the National. Sometimes Ted and I disagree and I mean no disrespect. I know that Mark Macrae had similar questions as Ted when we talked at the National. Good, honest, knowledgable people can disagree.
JimB