The Card That Might Redefine Restoration + Keith Olbermann's Wagner Story

This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up, required compatibility and availability. Various 18 plus. Hi, friends. It's Dan Wilber and Zach Sims and we're the hosts of My New Thing, a comedy podcast about obsessions. It's a show where we talk to comedians about their niche hobbies and their pop culture fixations. Everything from graffiti to 70s cinema and really anything in between. It's called My New Thing. Get it wherever you get your podcast. Michael Jordan Sports cards is a lifestyle. Sports cards and we live now. Jeremy Lee in the building and every guest that you ever needed. Sports cards after hours keep the hobby heated. Updates, homie. Talk like you never seen it. Sports cards live and who could ever beat it? Sports cards is a lifestyle. Sports cards and we live now. Welcome to another episode of Sports Cards Live with your host, Jeremy Lee. I'm gonna go through a lot of comments here. About 16 comments, guys. And then we're gonna come back and we're gonna go to David and Josh and we're gonna come back to you, Al, so you can all. I. I would ask you take some notes if you want on what I'm. Because you might have a few things going through your mind here, Al, David and Josh as well. But let's just go through some things here. First of all, a couple. Ron Olmstead is back. Loves the show. Doesn't catch it live very often, but it's definitely my favorite pod. Ron, thank you so much. Glad you're here. Okay. Some people are taking stabs at what to call the. The work done to the car. Terry Fortune says conjoined stooks says rebuilt Wagner. Brian says a collage. Chris says jigsaw card. Ken Fickle says artwork with a question mark. Larry Gitlin says not only restored, but enhanced. I like that. Jeff Will says altered equals fraud. Dangerous precedent. We're walking down when we accept restored cards. Can't do it. I think JE Wells is just like. Is just wrong. I think that's. I don't think that, that, that. I don't think I just lost the comment. Damn it. I don't think that. Altered equals fraud. Altered only equals fraud. If you're trying to deceive somebody. But if altered equals fraud, then every vintage card in the hobby is fraud. Because every vintage card in the hobby is altered by this point. Not to deceive, but honest alteration. That's a big difference there. So if you're calling, if you are calling this type of job, work done to a card to be fraud, you don't have the intelligence really required or at least you haven't thought of it completely and you're just kind of not. This isn't the show for you. If you feel that way. You there, there's more 101 stuff out there that's better for you. If you think that this is, that the card itself is fraud, the fact that it doesn't have the native orange background tells you right there it's not fraud. Plus like Al just said, everything that's on the website. Here's a great question though Al, actually we'll come back to that. It's a question from Mookie. We'll come back to it. Just want to say line card trader, glad to have you here with us. Jeff. Will said car analogy, if you need to explain you're losing. Not true at all. This does require, Jeff, your comments. I, I do just caution you, Jeff Wills, to just, you know, try to, try to try to use a bit more logic if you can because that's just not, that's just not. We come here to talk about cards three or four hours every Saturday night, guys. I mean we, we don't need, you know, we're talking about cards. That's what we do here. So. And I'll tell you, I've talked to Al quite a bit. Al can talk. So it's also his, also just who Al is that he likes to tell stories. I mean it's just the way it is. Rob Star says when you bring two separate entities together to create one, you are fabricating a new piece. I think that is bang on. I, I think that explains it Al. So think about that for a few minutes Al, if you don't mind. Petty says not if you are restoring and disclosing that is not fraud. Non disclosure is clearly fraud though. Absolutely Petty. Absolutely. There's some logic right there. It's good to be back. Says sports car live. Auburn says okay. Wasn't Keith Olbermann even somewhat fooled he owned the card and wasn't aware it was the die cut copy or authentic? I'll out before we go. I'll actually, I'll leave that one there for a moment. Al, if you can you address that now Keith Olbermann isn't with us, but assuming al that you've had lengthy conversations with him, what can you tell us about that? So there was an article in. Do you guys know VCBC magazine? Josh, I know you do. It's vintage and classic baseball collector. It was a magazine that was published in the early 2000s or late 1990s to the early 2000s. There was an article that was a very, very controversial article called. It was about open and honest restoration in the hobby. And what it was was an interview with a paper conservator who did work on cards and was very proud of the work that he did. Right. As are most conservators. If you go to conservators websites, they'll show you 52 mantles that they worked on and they'll show you before and after photos. What happened to the card after that is not their issue. Right. So this particular guy was saying, okay, so the work is being done on cards and we're very proud of it, but not everybody discloses it. So Keith read that article and he became very interested in the concept and of learning what you could do with cards. I think Josh and I were a part of a community where we were all kind of learning at the same time. In the early 2000s, like you can get a card wet. These are things that collectors today just take for granted that cards get stuck. So like, for a long time I thought, like, oh, you don't want to wet a card with even water, right? So you kind of learning they can do all this stuff to cards. So Keith sent this gentleman a card to restore and he restored it and sent it back and explained what he did to it. And Keith said we should do a really high profile card and then bring it out to the hobby and show the hobby look what we did. So that person said, listen, I have a lead on really poor condition Wagner. And Keith said, let's go, let's do it. And. And so he never saw the Wagner. If you look, and it's not on my website yet because I just got it, but the original catalog listing, you know, today, when, when you know some auction house sells a Wagner, it's a lot number one. This lot, this Wagner was a lot number 875 in the, in the, in the auction that it appeared in. Okay. And so Keith had never seen it. And what he got was the restored Wagner. And the way he tells the story is he was given the Wagner, he picked it up in person, and then he was blown away by the work he brought the card back, put it in his safe, and then went off to cover the super bowl that year. And he was gone for 10 days or two weeks or whatever it was. And then he came back, opened up his safe, looked at the card and said, I need to understand what. What this is. I. This is crazy. This looks so good. So he tried to get in touch with the conservator, and the conservator had vanished. No phone number? No phone number didn't work. Emails bounced back. He even wrote him a letter, returned to sender. And so Keith said, I don't know what this is, and I can't rightly go out and crow about it. So it became a paperweight in his office, which is amazing to me, because this Wagner, this die cut Wagner, sold in that auction and then disappeared. All of the people who were following, you know, who were trying to trace the provenance of all of the T206 Wagners, they had no idea what happened to this one. It was in an auction, and then nobody ever saw it ever again. Well, that. Now we know what happened to it. You know, in the time. In. In that ensuing time, Keith was able to acquire another Wagner for his collection. Actually, at one point he had four. It's well known that he owns the Wagner strip, which I think is the best Wagner. And. And he's got another trimmed Wagner. And so this card kind of became an afterthought. He, you know, it's funny, he told me a story. He said, you know, I've moved from apartment to apartment to apartment, and each one of those times I go and I make sure my Wagners are properly insured for the move, and I make sure that they're secure, and I take them and I bring them. And this one I throw in a box and the movers just move it to the next place. And. And, you know, that's. It's the craziest thing in the world. He said, one time I had the movers come and pack up and. And she's left this card for them to just pack up. At any point, they could have just. We made off with a Wagner. And so, you know, when. When he brought it to my attention, it was the die cut. The die cut was the obvious one. You know, I was just aware of that card. If you go, like I said, if you go to T206 resource, you just scroll through and it's right there. And what I did was I went back to Rob Lifson and I asked, because it was his auction, I went back to Rob Lifson, and I asked him if he could produce a scan that card from the catalog, because it wasn't even an Internet auction. It was in 1996, so there was just a printed catalog. So he had actually take it somewhere and have it scanned. And he sent me to scan, and I asked Keith to send me a nice photo of the card straight up. And then what I did was I put them together on top of each other in Photoshop. And you can actually see on my website, you can see the video where I just fade one into the other. And you can see the places where there's a crease and. And there's a little. It's clear. Right. Sorry, Al. So this is how we know that the card from that auction is the paperweight card, which is now this card. Yes, but not only that. Andy Broom from cgc. Yes. Authenticated it as well and slabbed it. I know there's some questions about why cgc. Why not? We can get into that in a. In a little bit. I want to. I want to just go. I want to check in on David and Josh because it's been you and me for a while now, and just see if. If either of David or Josh have any comments, questions for Al. David, you're nodding. Yes. What's on your mind, David? So. So first thing I want to say that's interesting about this, that I feel like isn't brought up enough, is that this was reconstructed, like, 30 years ago. I think it'd be very different if it was reconstructed a month ago. Right. And I mean, this was really done for his own personal taste. This wasn't done for him to flip. Right. And I think that that's a really important aspect of this. He was doing it for the art because it's his card that he thought was very cool. That's different to me than somebody that is doing this. They buy it and they're trying to sell it right away. I don't know if it should be different, but I do like it that it's for the collector side a little bit more than for the sales side. I mean, I have so many questions for you, Al, but I don't want to get too much into it. But do you have any idea now, like, what happened to the car doctor that disappeared? Is there any knowledge or thoughts on that? There's nothing that we can find out about him. No idea. No idea. And, you know, there were some folks that tried to look him up. I mean, from my standpoint, doesn't really matter. I know what was done to the card. And you know, we were able to, and, and CGC was able to verify what I thought because they have this. I forget what the machine is called, but they're able to put this card in and fire all different kinds of light at it. And they can, you know, you can see on my website, you can see where the inpainting is. I mean it's, it's pretty cool technology for detecting, you know, any kind of work that's been done on a card. And with Keith, like having that conversation with the, the artist that ended up doing this, was it ever discussed because he did paint the Wagner, right? To be able to fix parts of even the die cut part. Was there ever a thought of painting the background to make it orange? If you're going to paint it at all, why not go that extra step? What's your thought on that? One of the things that I think gets lost in the discussion is the fact that the goal of this wasn't to hide and make a perfect Wagner. The goal of this was to show the kinds of things that paper conservators can do to baseball cards. And you know, when we talk about alteration versus restoration and things like that, I'm sorry, we all have altered cards in our collections that we don't know are altered. We all have them. You know, I mean, I mean they're, this is. All you have to do is go to Blowout and look at all of the work that Bota did for years at, you know, the before and after work on, on even the most common cards. Okay, so, so you know, cards that, that you know, were sold as threes that had a little stain and now have a little bit sharper corners in their fives and, and that kind of stuff, it's, it's, it's an epidemic and it has been for years and years and years in this hobby. You know, I think 30 years ago, like you, like you said that, you know, the goal of this was for a collector to have the work done on the card and then to present it to the hobby and say, look at the before and after on this. You know, this is, it was described to him as a poor condition card and what he got back in, I mean if you, if you look at, and this is a whole different discussion about what has happened to grading standards over the, over the last 30 years. But if you look at that card through the lens of a 1990s collector, that's a near mint card. You know, it's not today, but by 1990 standards. Absolutely is. So that's pretty tremendous work. Yeah, that, that's all. Can I go one more, Jeremy? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I know you're going to get into, you know, the current grading situation, which I'm excited to hear about. But do you know, over the last decade, before this recent time, did he ever try to get the card graded at that time? No. Keith is a, is a notorious disliker of third party grading. He. If I think one of the things that, that maybe some folks who are newer to the hobby don't realize Keith has. Keith is one of the most sophisticated collectors I've ever known. He's been collecting since the 60s, if you're familiar with the. I mean, he wrote for baseball card magazines. He was the editor of a baseball card magazine in the 70s. If you're familiar with the 1975 SSPC set. Keith Olbermann wrote the player bios on the backs of all those cards. Keith Olbermann was a photographer for Don Russ. He shot, he shot baseball cards in the, in the 80s, in the 90s when he was on MSNBC every year when Topps came out with the, with the new cards for that issue, Keith was the guy who opened the first pack on television. You know, this is a collector who's been at it for a really long time, notoriously does not like grading. And you know, you do a little bit of Internet research and you can see that for decades. You know, Keith is not a fan. And, but he also recognizes that in the case of a card like this, it's gotta have, you know, third party evaluation. Especially, you know, initially the plan was not to sell this car. The plan was to, to, you know, verify, wow, I have this Wagner. And so he, we needed a grading company to do that. And, and then once, once we did. Look, guys, I own an auction house. You know, my, my job is to sell baseball cards. And, and you know, I knew that when Keith said, you know, we're gonna go out there and we're gonna publicize this. You know, my feeling was the, the, you know, the time to sell is when everybody's talking about it, you know, great time, you know, so, so it was kind of me that, that leaned into that a little bit. As you would. Josh, how about you? Any thoughts or questions? I think it's cool. I mean, you got to preserve. This is like someone said earlier, this is hobby history. The Wagner is the most, you know, important and most iconic card in the hobby. And, you know, it's important to preserve hobby History. And it's not the first time a. A reconstructed card is sold. Like, the. Just so. The Just so Tobacco Burkett sold an REA, I think, like 2018 or 2019, and PSA put it on the flip as trimmed alter, like if they put a new back on it. So, I mean, it's an important card, and it's gonna be fun. There are. There are. I. I should note. And Josh, you're aware of this, there are two other restored Wagners in PSA holders that are graded restored. And. And, you know, one of them just recently sold for $1.9 million. And if you look at the before and after of that card, I mean, that card had so many creases, and. And they're gone. And that. That broke the surface of the card. And. And, I mean, it's beautiful. But, you know, if you don't like altered cards, you don't like that one. If you don't like restored cards, you don't like that one. And. And so it's. You know, it's gonna be fun. I think. You know, I think that. I think that this card is being. I mean, a lot of people are very sort of flippant about it. Just. They're just writing it off to. To certain first for what, you know, some. Some reason that. That makes them just dismiss it. But I think that this is a bit of a watershed moment in the hobby with this particular card. I really do. I just don't know what that watershed moment is about or it's a combination of. Of the things. I don't. Listen, the word alter doesn't really work for me for this card because it's inherent in the. In the silo. I don't even call it die cut. It's the silhouetted. It's the silhouetted Wagner. It wasn't die cut cut. That implies it was cut with a die. It was cut out with an. With an. Some sort of scissors or something. But it's the authentic silhouette of Wagner from an authentic Tito6 Wagner card. It represents about half of the original Wagner card. The other half is the Tommy Lead. So you are marrying these two cards together again? I'm. Okay. I'm not. The word altered, it's. It's. It's almost, like, obvious. So it's definitely. The card has been restored, but it's also been refabricated, reconstructed using a genuine T206, which. I love that they use the genuine T206 and not just some generic card stock. I like that they used an authentic T206. I love that it does not look the same. I'm one of the few people that love that. This is a, this is a one of one. In a way. There is, there will never be another Honus Wagner like this unless they, unless someone comes across another one that some kid cut out Honus from the background itself. This is the only one that will ever come around like this. It stands apart from the. All the other Wagners. Not only because of. Well, because of what it is, the way it was made, the, the inputs that were used to make it. So I think that this watershed moment type of thing has to do with restoration and art. This to me the, the restorer is somewhat of an artist. They, they, they, they had to bring these two pieces together to make it look good. They had to, I don't know, sew the fibers together, whatever they did to attach the, the, the, the silhouetted Wagner on top of the leech. They did a great job. It looks great from what I can see with the card. And so I, I don't like. To me, the, like to me I would love to own it. Like I, I think this thing. I think it's an amazing piece. I would love to own it. I'm not going to unfortunately, but the other. So like is this, is this, is this a moment where 5, 10, 20, 30 years down the road we're gonna look back and say yeah, it was that. It was that Wagner, the Oberman Wagner on Love of the game. That kind of. That's when the hobby change or that. Not when the hobby changed, but that's when restoration. Now I'm not. We're talking about transparency here. We're talking about trans, which I've been calling for, for year, for years, for, for a while now. I've even gone as far al. And you guys have probably heard me say. This is saying whoever the restorer is, the artist, they should sign their name on the card like be proud of your work, initial it or something. Now this guy didn't do this in the late 90s. Wish he would have. But this is a. I think we're gonna look back at this moment. So yeah, it was that card back in 2026 that finally opened the doors for restoration and like high end card art. Imagine you have just the scuzziest of 52 tops mantles. You found it. And this thing is just. It's gross. You know. Now that's still, it's still cool. A lot of people like to own it, but some people would rather restore it and Maybe the back is so tattered and hardly there that you grab us another 52 tops card and you find a way to bring them together to make it look better than it did. Doesn't even have to have that same bluish background. It can have a different color background. And I think I would advise if you're doing this kind of work on cards, you should make it look different from the original because that helps towards transparency. It helps to make sure that you're that. That you or anyone in the future is not going to attempt to commit fraud with the card trying to pass it off as a real thing. So I love the way it was made and, but again I do think that I it's. And it's going to come down to what it sells for. If this card sells for like 500 grand, well then it, it tells you one thing about restoration and, and you know re reconstruction and like the art card movement. But if this thing sells for north of whatever over a million 1, 5, over 2, which I think it might, it might send a signal to the market that that card reconstruction card, art restoration, the other and saving these pieces, actually giving them a second chance at life. Yeah. It has to be transparent though. It cannot be with fraud, fraudulent intents. And I don't think that this card has it. Josh, you want to say something? Go ahead and jump in, buddy. I have to say I think there's a distinction between restoring a Honus Wagner where there are only 50 of them ever as opposed to. I don't think it, I don't think it's going to like open a door to now restoring 52 mantles where there's like go to any card show, you find a thousand of them at, at 707's booth. So I think it's different. I think like, like the briquette, there's one of them ever the Wagner, there's only 50 and there is. They are in PSA holders saying restored like there already is precedent for that. So I think that I sent you a. Jeremy, I sent you a picture of one. But so I think that's, it's not like this watershed moment of like now it's opening the floodgates. I think for very unique historically important cards in our hobby like Wagner and like I don't know, I can't think of anything else but like Wagner, you know that that's important. Not a, not a mass produced 52 tops high number card. Maybe a 48 leaf cow. You know if something I hear. Yeah, good point Josh. I hear what you're saying, I think, though, that it's. It's a case study, and it's a case study that will be referred to in other situations down the road that are going to use it as almost like evidence of acceptability. Well, the Wagner sold in 2026 for 2.5 million. Whatever the number, or 1.5. Whatever the number is going to be. Well, here's a 59, tops, Bob Gibson that, you know, now it's got a. Now it's got a magenta background and, you know, it's like. Yeah, it's not the original. We're not trying to tell you it's the original. It's different. It. This is, this is a hybrid, guys. It's a hybrid between a sports card. It's a hybrid between a restored sports card and an art piece. And, and like, I think, I think that this piece is going to attract. Oh, yeah, okay. I think this piece is going to attract bidders that may not be looking for a normal Wagner. I'm not saying they're going to bid, but it's going to bring them. It's going to bring attention to people like that. I think it is going to do that. And I think there are also going to be bidders who will bid on this card that wouldn't bid on a normal Wagner. I also think that if. And these. I'm. I'm thinking that this is possible. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm just thinking. I'm trying to think outside the box and think, like, what could the impact be? So one of the other things I'm thinking is that there are probably people out there who are. Who wonder why those card nerds are so. Get off the lawn about not altering cards. Like, and, and like, there's probably people out there. I, I get, I get messages about this all the time, the last month and a half because talking about people coming at me for saying, what do you mean? I. We can't. We can't soak our cards and we can't do this or that. Like, I got people coming to me from that side of things. So the card restoration community is bigger than we want to admit, bigger than we want, than we want to think it is, but it is big, you guys. More people are doing it than you, than you want to know about. That's a problem. Like, like Al said, we all have altered cards in our collections that have got by PSA and other grading companies, but there could be somebody out there in the card art world. Who says, I'm going to make a statement, I want to make a statement with this thing. And they might, they might say like, we're gonna, we're gonna show those, you know, those guys have been in the hobby for 50 years that think they own the space and think that they're, it's their way of the highway. We're gonna show them and we're gonna blow the pants off this thing. I could see that happening. Where. And then. But you need more than one. So maybe you have a couple. If there's two of them and they go to battle, one guy says, guy's got 150 million bucks, what does he care? He's like, I'm gonna throw a five million dollar bid at this thing. I'm not saying it's gonna happen. It could, it's plausible. And then someone else says, this is, this is a nice card. I like it. Yeah, I want it for my collection. Hey, and I, if I had quarter billion dollars in the bank, maybe even a hundred million, I'd throw a three million dollar bid at this thing. Because I think, I love the story. I, I think it's cool. I like the looks of the card. I love that it's, that it's not trying to be an authentic Wagner. I love that. So, point being, we'll see what happens here. I'm probably wrong, but you never know. If two people go at it and one guy comes in at 5 million, the other guy comes in at 3 million, it's going to sell for over $3 million. That's going to send a signal and then it's going to be up to the hobby talking heads and other people in the know to try and figure out who bought this thing and what their purpose was. And there'll be all sorts of speculation about it. So I, I do think, and Josh, I appreciate what you said and you're right, this is a special situation. Someone said in the chat there's only a couple car. And Dave and I have talked to this at length. Like, what other cards would you accept into your collection that were like this? There's only a handful, but that's me. There are. And you know, I can, I can afford more cards than other people can. And those people can afford more cards than other people can. There's people that can afford way more cards than I can and so on and so forth that we're all playing at different levels. And you know, maybe for the, for the 100 millionaire, there's only the Wagner, not even a Mantle. They'll just go buy a PSA 8 Wagner or something like that, but for other people. And this comes back to your point, Josh. I think that the card that this card could and will be used as a case study and a, an anchor almost for people looking at other cards down the road. So, I don't know. I mean, okay, card. You see this right card deal says pumping. That is all. That is what makes a card go up. Yeah, pumping. He's, he's right. Attention on the card, even talking about it right now. We got 217 people watching right now, and they're all hearing us talk. They're hearing me talk about. They're hearing you, Al. They're hearing Josh and, and, and they're hearing the people in the chat make comments as well. David Chase. David, you're the most powerful man in hobby content. I don't need to say your name every time they, they. But, but no, the car deal is right. That's what it is. Hey, why is the 52 tops mantle even iconic? Why? Because it was on Action Auction cataloged, and it was Mick Mantle. And all these things you put, you put decades of impressions on an image. Guys, the whole world is about pumping. Everything, every brand that you're wearing, every brand in your refrigerator, every brand in your garage. It's all about marketing and pumping. Even this hobby that we love. It is, players are on highlights. You want to buy them. Players have an interesting Wikipedia page. You want to buy them. Our buddy Tony Southern Collector does a video about Larry Dobie. Guess what? More people are buying Larry Dobie cards. It's not. And it's innocent. It's like if you, it's almost to the point now where you better not talk publicly about what you like. Otherwise you're pumping. You know, my job as the owner of an auction house is to, is to generate publicity for the cards that I'm selling, you know, right now. This Wagner, you know, somebody said to me, somebody said to me today at the Fanatic show, this is the most famous card in the hobby. Like that happened. We, we announced this card a week ago. You know, like, we're not talking about a card that people have known about for years and years and years. It's, that's part of my job. And, and so I'm not going to make any kind of apologies for the fact that, you know, I'm out there in the world trying to educate people about the existence of this card. And, and, you know, I'm, I'm not. You're gonna have the opinion that you want to have about, about what the card is and, and how you would value it. But you talking about it is, is part of what, it's, part of what I'm trying to do, you know, so, so I, I, I can't see, say, as an auction house, there's anything wrong with that. It's, it's, that's what I mean, I would hope that anybody who's consigning cards to an auction house would hope, you know, I mean, we've got two auction house owners right here in the, in the, in this show. That's what, that's what our job is to do, you know. So thanks for tuning in and being a part of the sports cards live community. Don't forget to, like, subscribe and most of all, keep collecting more great content to come. Sports cards is a lifestyle.