The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History’s Most Desired Baseball Card – A Gripping Investigation into the T206 Wagner Forgery and

The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History’s Most Desired Baseball Card – A Gripping Investigation into the T206 Wagner Forgery and

Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to still exist, having been released in limited numbers just after the turn of the twentieth century. Most, with their creases and stains, look like they've been around for nearly one hundred years. But one—The Card—appears to have defied the travails of time. Its sharp corners and still-crisp portrait make it the single-most famous—and most desired—baseball card on the planet, valued today at more than two million dollars. It has transformed a simple hobby into a billion-dollar industry that is at times as lawless as the Wild West. Everything about The Card, which has made men wealthy as well as poisoned lifelong relationships, is fraught with controversy—from its uncertain origins to the nagging possibility that it might not be exactly as it seems. In this intriguing, eye-opening, and groundbreaking look at a uniquely American obsession, award-winning investigative reporters Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson follow The Card 's trail from a Florida flea market to the hands of the world's most prominent collectors. The Card sheds a fascinating new light on a world of counterfeiters, con men, and the people who profit from what used to be a pastime for kids. “Lively and well-researched.” - Sports Illustrated.com “[The Card is] the story of a rare piece of Americana that spans nearly a century and involves scores of diverse lives and shadowy deals.” - Daily News Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to still exist, having been released in limited numbers just after the turn of the twentieth century. Most, with their creases and stains, look like they've been around for nearly one hundred years. But one—The Card—appears to have defied the travails of time. Its sharp corners and still-crisp portrait make it the single-most famous—and most desired—baseball card on the planet, valued today at more than two million dollars. It has transformed a simple hobby into a billion-dollar industry that is at times as lawless as the Wild West. Everything about The Card, which has made men wealthy as well as poisoned lifelong relationships, is fraught with controversy—from its uncertain origins to the nagging possibility that it might not be exactly as it seems. In this intriguing, eye-opening, and groundbreaking look at a uniquely American obsession, award-winning investigative reporters Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson follow The Card 's trail from a Florida flea market to the hands of the world's most prominent collectors. The Card sheds a fascinating new light on a world of counterfeiters, con men, and the people who profit from what used to be a pastime for kids. Michael O'Keeffe is an award-winning journalist who is a member of the New York Daily News sports investigation team. He has been a reporter and editor for more than twenty years. A graduate of the University of Colorado, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. Teri Thompson is a former top editor at the New York Daily News, where she created the newspaper’s award-winning sports investigative team that broke the Chuck Blazer story in 2014. Before coming to the News , she was a sports olumnist at the Rocky Mountain News and an editor at ESPN. She has co-authored two books, including the critically acclaimed “ American Icon: The Fall of Rogers Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America ” and is also a member of the Connecticut bar. The Card Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History?s Most Desired Baseball Card By Michael O'Keeffe HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2008 Michael O'Keeffe All right reserved. ISBN: 9780061123931 Chapter One Expressway to Fortune The tension was as thick as the steel-gray clouds that hung over the Long Island Expressway as the beat-up old green Honda sped along on a Sunday evening in 1985, past the car washes and the billboards hard by the highway and into Hicksville, a New York City suburb built on the edges of what were once the potato fields that stretched into the far reaches of Long Island. Bill Mastro and Rob Lifson weren't talking much as they drove into town from the Willow Grove card convention near Philadelphia to the doors of the collectibles shop in a dingy strip mall. The shop was closed to the public that day: Only Mastro and Lifson would be allowed in for a look at the treasure inside, and Lifson himself would barely get a glimpse, relegated to the front of the store while Mastro made the deal in the back. What they found in the store that day would profoundly change both men's lives, even as it transformed the sleepy hobby of baseball-card collecting into a billion-dollar industry and turned an obsessive vintage-card collector into its most powerful player. It would ruin a friendship that had endured for years, and it would cast dark shadows over the hobby they both loved. What they found in the store that day was The Card. Jay Zimmerman was at the same convention in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, in 1985 when he got