Revisiting the T206 Wagner "strip"

[Al C.risafulli]

Part of what i do for a living is buy printing. I am not a printer, I am a customer of printers. I release artwork to a printer every day of my life, and i have done so for the last six years.

Given that each of the people who I have spoken with at have actually held this sheet in its raw form have stated that it's a continuous strip, and each of those people is more knowledgeable about cards than me, I tend to believe them.

In terms of the colors and whatnot, that is fairly easily explained, IMO, as some sort of pre production press sheet. Im sure that there were many of these made before the final art was approved, and it certainly wouldn't have been difficult for someone to slice off a row of five of them and give them to a friend, after all, in 1909 these were just cigarette pack stiffeners and not six figure pieces of American history.

Al