Mastro Pleads Guilty to Fraud

He is now admitting to trimming the Honus Wagner.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/sports-collectibles-king-pleads-guilty-article-1.1210539

Desperate Times ....

I hope an angry lynch mob of vintage baseball card buyers trim something off him - and I'm not referring to his remaining hair.

Shouldnt that get some bad pub for PSA I thought PSA graded that card.

PSA should be held accountable too. They're the ones who graded the damn Wagner.

I have the book, "The Card," which is referenced in the article. The book chronicles the history of the infamous doctored card and Mastro's involement. The hobby has known forever that Mastro is a shady crook and trimmed the card, yet nothing was ever done about it, and the Wagner kept being sold for ridiculous amounts of money as a PSA 8 card.
I wonder if PSA is going to re-encase the card as "authentic" instead of a Near Mint 8, now that Mastro's admitted to trimming it.

DUMP YOUR PSA CARDS IMMEDIATELY!

(send me your Andrew Luck 10s)

jcmint said:

Shouldnt that get some bad pub for PSA I thought PSA graded that card.

Click to expand...

First thing I thought of as well. Wasn't it the first PSA graded card, or am I wrong?

PSA graded the Wagner. I seem to recall an interview in The Card with one of the PSA graders, who admitted he knew the card was trimmed.

Sometimes I really hate this hobby!

Yup, first card graded!

It was not the first PSA card graded according to PSA, PSA's owner had some of his graded first, however they wanted good pub and labelled this cards as serial number 1.

First off PSA has a money back guarantee on their cards so technically the owner of the Wagner could demand fair market value price in the amount of the difference between a PSA 8 and a authentic Wagner. PSA has a nest egg it sits on for these situations, I doubt it is 2.8 million dollars but who knows. Maybe insurance will cover it.

Second, PSA has long been derided by pre war collectors and not due to the Wagner trimming issue. EVERYONE who collected T206's pretty much know it was trimmed up. It was one of those hobby things were people just kinda grin and look the other way when you brought it up. The reason most collectors got pissed at PSA is for their running up the pops of PSA 8 T206's during a certain time period in the late 1990s, early 2000's. All of the sudden you saw PSA 8 Cobbs, Mathewsons and Youngs in every big auction house's auctions during this time period.

Well it just so happened some MAJOR, I mean MAJOR money collectors were trying to put the set together in PSA 8 shape, seriously I kid you not. Well there just wasn't enough PSA 8's to go around. Something had to be done and bam, all of the sudden certain dealers and auction houses had PSA 8 T206's up the ***** well ok it wasn't a lot by modern standards but even 3 PSA 8's of one card is a major movement in T206 land.

A lot of old time collectors shook their had at the bunch of re-backed, bleached, spooned, stretched and soaked cards sitting in shiny new slabs. That is why you see a huge dislike by a lot of collectors for PSA pre war cards.

Now PSA I believe has cleaned up it's act and you don't see the issue as much in the newly graded T cards but the past cannot be undone and it soured a lot of collectors on buying T cards in PSA holders.

If PSA knew what was happening, will they get pulled into this investigation? Or will it just be Mastro and his cronies that go down?

It is pretty funny how PSA seems to be dodging this bullet - especially if it's been put in text that graders knew that the card was trimmed.

Just throwing this out there, but grading was just in its infancy when that Wagner was slabbed. I doubt PSA had the knowledge of trimming and the signs of it at that time.

Therion said:

If PSA knew what was happening, will they get pulled into this investigation? Or will it just be Mastro and his cronies that go down?

Click to expand...

When Mastro was given his summons at the National in Chicago so did Joe Orlando of PSA. They have been involved in the issue of giving Mastro letters of authenticity or what is now called auction letters that gave Mastro the ability to self authenticate their items. However to get a full PSA/DNA letter of authentication you had to send the item in to PSA and some started coming back as no good.

Also there were questions on whether PSA was reslabbing cards for Mastro that didn't win due to shill bidding so they would have different serial numbers and not be so obvious in the next auction.

This run down MEMORY LANE was not too fun for me but some other folks in the auction house world should be scared.

Is cutting a card from a printer's sheet considered trimming? What about cutting cards from Post Cereal & Jello boxes from the early 1960s?

A_Pharis said:

It is pretty funny how PSA seems to be dodging this bullet - especially if it's been put in text that graders knew that the card was trimmed.

Click to expand...

I believe 100% PSA wanted this card to be real so much they ignored the trimming issue just to have a holy grail type card in their holder. I don't see it so much as an evil or calculated thing, I really think they got over excited and just didn't review the card as critically as they should have. The bad pub from this and the financial hit should have been in their minds as well.

KLARNOLD said:

Is cutting a card from a printer's sheet considered trimming? What about cutting cards from Post Cereal & Jello boxes from the early 1960s?

Click to expand...

PSA has the stance that if a card exists in a cut form as its primary means of distribution to the hobby then cards cut from sheets will not be graded by them. Their reason is that cards put into packs have to overcome plant cutting quality issues and the normal wear and tear from being packaged, shipped open and stored while cards from sheets can be cut perfectly and look brand new as long as the sheets they come from are clean. It would create two different types of cards and be confusing to collectors, according to them. People give high premiums for PSA 10s because the card made it throught the cutting and distribution process in perfect shape and thus given a premium value while sheet cut cards did not. 1979 Gretzkys are a perfect example of the price difference in sheet cut vs. pack cards.

T cards were distributed as pre cut cards in tobacco packs. PSA will never grade, knowingly a sheet cut T card.

jbhofmann said:

Just throwing this out there, but grading was just in its infancy when that Wagner was slabbed. I doubt PSA had the knowledge of trimming and the signs of it at that time.

Click to expand...

Of course PSA had the knowledge of trimmed cards in the early '90s.
I have a baseball card collector's book from 1977 and several from the early '80s that warn of trimmed cards and describes the signs.
Sports Collector's Digest in the '80s occasionally ran stories of trimmed vintage cards being shunned by serious collectors.

Trimming has always been one of the biggest pitfalls of being a serious vintage collector, especially when there were no grading companies to give collectors the illusion of peace of mind.
All it takes is a magnifying loupe to see the edges of a card were not factory cut, and it's especially obvious on a card so old as a T206.

Ken Kendrick is going to have this guys NUTZ cutoff, labeled a terrorist and have him shot and the body deported to Mexico. Or he may trade him for a Shortstop and throw in Upton just because he can,

Kendrick is a bad **** and takes no BS.