'King Of Memorabilia' Admits To Altering $2.8M Baseball Card
By Samantha Abernethy in News on Apr 11, 2013 10:20PM
The self-professed "King of Memorabilia" admitted to a federal judge that he altered an ultra-rare baseball card to bump up the price. Bill Mastro, 60, offered up the information as part of a plea deal, but the judge threw out the deal, saying the sentence was too lenient.
Mastro is also accused of using "shill bidding" to drive up the price at his Burr Ridge company Mastro Auctions, as well selling off a fake lock of Elvis Presley's hair and a fake 1869 Cincinnati Reds trophy ball. Mastro was first investigated in 2008, after the 1909 Honus Wagner sold for $1.62 million, and he and others were indicted in 2012.
The baseball card in question isn't just rare, it's legendary. For starters, the card features Honus Wagner, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900 to 1917 and went on to coach the Pirates from 1933 to 1951. In 1909, Wagner and the Pirates beat Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers in an epic 7-game World Series matchup.
Enter the T206 Card. Pictured at right, the T206 Honus Wagner card is not treasured for its beauty. One might expect it's lined in gold for the price. The American Tobacco Company made the T206 series of baseball cards from 1909 to 1911. The company printed off this lithograph of Honus Wagner in 1909, and less than 200 of the cards were printed before Wagner refused to allow production to continue.
Now, only 57 copies of the card are known to exist, and the one Mastro admitted to altering is the most well known. Mastro sold it in 1987 for $110,000, then four years later helped the buyer sell it to Bruce McNall (former owner of the Los Angeles Kings) and hockey great Wayne Gretzky for $451,000 in 1991. It's changed hands several times, and over the decades, Mastro Auctions has managed several of those transactions, including the 2000 sale on eBay for $1.265 million. In 2007, Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick bought the card for $2.8 million.
In the 2012 indictment, prosecutors argue the Wagner card was used to market Mastro Auctions as "a premiere seller of valuable items for which a strong market existed" by claiming to have sold the most expensive card in the world. From the indictment [PDF]
In making this representation, however, defendant MASTRO knowingly omitted the material fact that defendant MASTRO had altered the baseball card by cutting the sides of the card in a manner that, if disclosed, would have significantly reduced the value of the card.
Prosecutors say Mastro has recently spoken "candidly" to investigators about how he cut the sides of the card. On Tuesday in court, Mastro admitted to changing the card's appearance in exchange for a 2 1/2-year sentence, but that isn't what happened.
According to the Sun-Times, Judge Ronald Guzman rejected the deal because he didn't want "to have his hands tied in sentencing Mastro, who might otherwise face up to 20 years behind bars." Then the judge said he'd received a letter from another man, who claimed Mastro had swindled him, and the fight goes on.