1971: Mastro gets his Plank

[Duluth Eskimo]

Maybe I see it from a different view. I have never known Mastro to be a good guy, or someone who helps others, or someone who just made a bad choice. He has always been a d-bag who is a self-centered, egotistical, asshole who enjoys his flock of followers. More reveling about his greatness makes me want to vomit. It reminds me of the people who would stand around this guys booth or follow him around he show back in the day validating his celebrity status.

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by Duluth Eskimo

Maybe I see it from a different view. I have never known Mastro to be a good guy, or someone who helps others, or someone who just made a bad choice. He has always been a d-bag who is a self-centered, egotistical, asshole who enjoys his flock of followers. More reveling about his greatness makes me want to vomit. It reminds me of the people who would stand around this guys booth or follow him around he show back in the day validating his celebrity status.

What on earth are you talking about? Who is "reveling about his greatness"??? I think everybody here recognizes that Mastro is a d-bag; I certainly do, but I'm also interested in how he got to where he is now, and to what extent he was always sleazy. (A considerable extent, I think, though his sleaziness really came to the forefront when the money involved in the hobby ballooned.) And as others have pointed out, Mastro was a significant figure in the hobby starting in the early 1970s, and if you're interested in the history of the hobby (as I am) it doesn't make sense to just ignore what he did back then, or refuse to discuss it just because he's a sleazy guy who's now in jail.

[Hankphenom]

Thanks for the Post, I enjoyed it. Who cares if Mastro was involved, it's still interesting. He's done enough damage, trying to expunge his significant role in the hobby's history is only doing more, in my opinion. As to the transaction itself, it strikes me that $320 must have seemed like a steal to many collectors at the time, as $1,500 for a decent Wagner must have struck some also. Sure, it was 1971, but I was out of college and working then, and that wasn't a fortune or anything. If you were trying to complete the set at the time, both of those prices seem quite reasonable.

[jsq]

nice article, keep them coming.

[jcmtiger]

Originally Posted by Duluth Eskimo

Maybe I see it from a different view. I have never known Mastro to be a good guy, or someone who helps others, or someone who just made a bad choice. He has always been a d-bag who is a self-centered, egotistical, asshole who enjoys his flock of followers. More reveling about his greatness makes me want to vomit. It reminds me of the people who would stand around this guys booth or follow him around he show back in the day validating his celebrity status.

Hi, just curious, what year did you meet Mastro?

Joe

[slidekellyslide]

$320 in 1971 adjusted for inflation is $1872 today. A steal.

[Hankphenom]

Even adjusting for the minuscule amounts collectors were used to paying for cards back then, those sums paid by Mastro for the key cards to complete the set just don't seem like that much. Obviously, that's what he thought!

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

Even adjusting for the minuscule amounts collectors were used to paying for cards back then, those sums paid by Mastro for the key cards to complete the set just don't seem like that much. Obviously, that's what he thought!

Agreed. With what we know today none of us would hesitate in 1971 to plunk down $320 for a Plank, but I'm sure the vast majority of card collectors probably thought that was crazy.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

Agreed. With what we know today none of us would hesitate in 1971 to plunk down $320 for a Plank, but I'm sure the vast majority of card collectors probably thought that was crazy.

Yes, crazy or at least not smart. But if you've spent years putting that set of 500+ together, and have developed some sense of just how difficult those last two are going to be, the opportunity to grab them at anything like those amounts would seem like a once in a lifetime opportunity. And obviously, the rapid acceleration in the prices for them thereafter means that many collectors did come to that awareness. It makes me wonder how many collectors were working on advanced T-206 collections at the time, or did that number just start to increase dramatically at about that time, thus creating the demand that drove the prices up astronomically?