What’s Alan Rosen’s Legacy?

As a retired journalist I’m saddened to see the slow demise of so many newspapers and magazines in this country, no matter how big or small. It has been occurring for more than two decades now, thanks in large part to the Internet.

One consumer publication I always enjoyed reading was Sports Illustrated (SI), which for decades was a weekly. But the past few years haven’t been kind to SI. It struggled to keep advertisers and was bought and sold a couple of times.

Its latest incarnation is as a monthly so it has lost timeliness. But the articles are still well written.

As I was perusing the March 2020 issue my eyes stopped at an article about the rise and fall of a sports-themed restaurant chain called the All-Star Café. Then I noticed within the piece the name of a well-known sports memorabilia dealer, the late Alan Rosen, who died three years ago.

Back in 1988 the magazine helped make Rosen a national figure in the sports world with a feature story about his wheeling and dealing in the vintage baseball card world.

This latest article didn’t make Rosen look good. Back in 1996 he had purchased a rare 1909 T206 Honus Wagner tobacco baseball card from Benny Ramos, who worked with a couple of the restaurant’s employees to steal it. They took this card, owned by actor Charlie Sheen, out of a display case and replaced it with a color photocopy mounted on board.

The killer paragraph about Rosen’s involvement in this sordid affair reads: “Rosen would have known that a T206 Honus Wagner card had sold for $222,500 just a few months earlier, at a Christie’s auction in Manhattan. That he was offering just $18,000—far below market value even given that Sheen’s T206 wasn’t in mint condition—suggests Rosen wasn’t buying Ramos’s story.”

So, why did Rosen pay Ramos anything whatsoever?  I believe that it all comes down to the way he lived his life: as a wheeler/dealer. He made this deal because what drove him throughout his life, even to the very end, was the thrill of making money. He didn’t need the money; making it energized him.

The last 15 years of his life were a slow financial demise as auction houses began dominating the hobby. He recognized this evolution and told me before he died that his solution was to heavily promote his willingness to pay cash for vintage cards on the spot.

He was controversial. He was a character. Many have cursed him but I thank him for all he did for this hobby, especially in its early days.