The Card: Collectors Con Men and the True Story of Historys Most Desired Baseball Card

About this book

Since its limited release just after the turn of the twentieth century this American Tobacco cigarette card has beguiled and bedeviled collectors. First identified as valuable in the 1930s when the whole notion of card collecting was still young the T206 Wagner has remained the big score for collectors who have scoured card shows flea markets estate sales and auctions for the portrait of baseballs greatest shortstop. Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to still exist. Most with their creases stains and dog-eared corners look worn and tattered like theyve been around for almost a century. But oneThe Cardappears to have defied the travails of time. Thanks to its sharp corners and its crisp portrait of Honus Wagner The Card has become the most famous and desired baseball card in the world. Over the decades as The Card has changed hands its value has skyrocketed. It was initially sold for $25 000 by a small card shop in a nondescript strip mall. Years later hockey great Wayne Gretzky bought it at the venerable Sothebys auction house for $451 000. Then more recently it sold for $1.27 million on eBay. Today worth over $2 million it has transformed a sleepy hobby into a billion-dollar industry that is at times as lawless as the Wild West. The Card has made men wealthy certainly but it has also poisoned lifelong friendships and is fraught with controversyfrom its uncertain origins and the persistent questions about its provenance to the possibility that it is not exactly as it seems. Now for the first time award-winning investigative reporters Michael OKeeffe and Teri Thompson follow the trail of The Card from a Florida flea market to the hands of the worlds most prominent collectors. They delve into a world of counterfeiters and con men and look at the people who profit from what used to be a kids pastime as they bring to light ongoing investigations into sports collectibles. OKeeffe and Thompson also examine the life of the great Honus Wagner a ballplayer whose accomplishments have been eclipsed by his trading card and the strange and fascinating subculture of sports memorabilia and its astonishing decline. Intriguing and eye-opening The Card is a ground-breaking look at a uniquely American hobby.