Cobb/Edwards and the T206 Honus Wagner

[Leon]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Leon- when you write, be it a book or an article, you need a point of view, or a thesis. O'Keeffe's reason for writing "The Card" was to expose fraud in the baseball card industry. As an investigative reporter that is his job. I am sure he recognizes there are fun aspects to collecting baseball cards, but that had nothing to do with his book.

Barry- I agree. And as someone who read the book, and is in the hobby quite a bit, I was only critiquing it. Overall, it was ok and was interesting........

[barrysloate]

There is no question that fraud and scandal make for good entertainment. O'Keeffe understands this, and his paper, The Daily News, lives by that credo.

There are any number of reasons one might critique "The Card", but the fact that the author left out the fun parts of the hobby is inconsequential.

[calvindog]

Barry, you should only know what Woodward and Bernstein left out of their Watergate reporting -- all the warm and fuzzies about Nixon and G. Gordon Liddy. Those investigative reporters can sure be cold bastards.

[barrysloate]

Good investigative reporting can be brutal, but that's the way the game is played.

[Leon]

I guess only if you want to a be a "fair" reporter, would you want to report everything. There is no room for that kind of nonsense when trying to make money, I understand that (I guess).

[teetwoohsix]

I've read the book a couple of times-after the first time I read it,I HAD to see what it looked like.
Then,one day on Net54,there was a link in a thread (can't remember the title of the thread),and it took me to a site where these two found an auction house who was going to TRY to auction off the fake.You should have read the auction houses' write up on it!!!
But then,there it was!!!A photo of the front and back!!!
No doubt about it,was fake as can be-they know this,thats why they won't send it in to be graded.
I wish I could remember the thread...........

[barrysloate]

The board's best guess was that a Wagner reprint was glued onto a real T206 common. The two owners sent the card to be chemically analyzed, and a small piece of the back was removed and tested. It was deemed to be genuine antique paper, and consistent with paper from the early part of the 20th century. Obviously, a modern reprint wouldn't pass that test.

Based on that conclusion, the owners believed their card was genuine.