[Apparently, God personally verified a recent Honus Wagner T206 card sold for $262K.]
What do I know about baseball cards? Nothing. But I read about two nuns who say some guy left them a circa 1910 Honus Wagner T206 baseball card, which the sisters then turned around for $262K this week. As Big League Stew’s David Brown notes, “Other than the rare heartless scoundrel out there, everyone loves stories about regular folks who stumble upon rare baseball cards and stand to make huge profits from their sale.” The buyer, one Doug Walton of Knoxville, Tennessee, is one of those so moved by sheer dumb luck and old ladies. He so loved the whole idea of buying it from the nuns he told the AP: “To be honest with you, we probably paid a little bit more than we should have,” he said Friday. “But with the back story, and the fact that it’s going to a really good charity, to us it just seemed worth it.”
Which is nice, except when you think back to a few years ago when two African-American card dealers, John Cobb and Ray Edwards, (pictured l-r), tried to sell their Honus Wagner card. They had it independently verified after some competitors dismissed it as a fake. The independent verification showed that the paper of the card was made around 1910. So, they were deemed con men, thieves, and liars to such a degree that they had to back off from selling it for the $850K they say it’s worth.
Heartless scoundrel that I am, who knows nothing about verifying century old baseball cards, I do think it’s pretty obvious that being a kindly old white lady versus two black guys who look like Do The Right Thing’s Buggin Out and Family Matters‘ Reginald VelJohnson can help move your moldy baseball cards. If I were advising Cobb and Edwards, I’d have them cut a deal with Betty White as their beard and split $2 million.
You know not of what you speak.