Honus Wagner Find Evidently Not In The Cards

PITTSFIELD, Maine - A boy who reported finding a rare Honus Wagner baseball card buried in his backyard has learned from an expert that it appears to be a worthless reprint.

Arlo Quint, 12, said he unearthed the Wagner card and three others while digging for worms in his backyard Monday. The cards were in an old tooth-powder can, he said.

Wagner, nicknamed the ``Flying Dutchman,'' played from 1897 to 1917 for the Pittsburgh Pirates. An authentic Wagner card in top condition could be worth $115,000.

But Bob Thing of Skowhegan, a card collector for 40 years, inspected Quint's card yesterday and said afterward in a telephone interview that the paper on which the Wagner card is printed appears to be thinner than it would be on an original.

Thing also noted that the lower portion of the card was missing, and that piece could have included words indentifying the card as a reprint.

The Wagner card surfaced only about a month after a boy in Stockton Springs, about 30 miles away, found a Honus Wagner card under similar circumstances.

The authenticity of the Stockton Springs card has not been questioned, said Mike Osborne, owner of a card shop that is handling its sale. ``I have no doubt in my mind that is legitimate,'' he said.

The similarity of the discoveries almost immediately sparked doubts about Quint's find.