Bill Mastro: The Baseball Card Swindler
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bill Mastro became one of the biggest names in the baseball card industry. As the owner of Mastro Auctions in New York City, Mastro handled some of the rarest and most valuable baseball cards in existence. Behind the flashy auctions and big sales numbers was a web of deceit that would eventually see Mastro convicted of fraud and sent to prison. This is the story of how Bill Mastro used his auction house and reputation to swindle collectors and investors out of millions.
Mastro got his start in the sports memorabilia business in the late 1970s working at a small shop in New York. In the early 1980s, he opened Mastro Auctions with his brother Michael. At first, it was a small operation dealing in lower value items. As the baseball card market started to boom in the late 1980s, Mastro Auctions rose to prominence auctioning off six and seven figure cards. Stars like Mickey Mantle and Honus Wagner would regularly sell for record prices through Mastro’s auctions.
By the early 1990s, Mastro Auctions was one of the top auction houses in the industry. Mastro cultivated an image of being the most trustworthy auctioneer in the business. He became a familiar face at card shows and would do interviews promoting the high prices his auctions would fetch. Behind the scenes though, Mastro was orchestrating an elaborate fraud. Unknown to bidders and consignors, Mastro was rigging his own auctions.
Mastro would have dummy bidders placed in the room to artificially drive prices up. After the auction, he wouldn’t pay the winning bidders and would simply return the cards to the consignor while pocketing the “buyer’s premium.” This allowed him to book massive sales totals for publicity purposes without any money actually changing hands. To pull it off long term, Mastro relied on a constant stream of new consignments and bidders to mask his scheme.
As the baseball card market started to cool in the early 1990s, it became harder for Mastro to hide his fraudulent activities. Bidders were getting wise to the fact they were never actually winning items. Meanwhile, consignors were getting impatient waiting to be paid. Mastro began issuing bad checks and promissory notes he had no way of honoring just to keep things afloat a little longer. By 1994, Mastro Auctions had collapsed under the weight of its own deception.
When investigators finally caught on to Mastro’s activities, they discovered the extent of his fraud was in the tens of millions of dollars. Dozens of collectors and investors had been swindled out of money through rigged auctions and bounced checks over the previous decade. Mastro was eventually charged with over 30 counts of fraud, forgery, and grand larceny. In 1996, he pled guilty and was sentenced to 6-18 years in state prison.
The fallout from Mastro’s scheme shook the baseball card industry. It cast doubt on auction results and transaction records from Mastro Auctions during the late boom. To this day, there is no way of knowing for sure which sales were real and which were artificially inflated. It also left many collectors and investors burned and distrustful of the high-priced auction scene. The case stands as one of the most brazen and long-running frauds ever perpetrated within the sports memorabilia market.
Bill Mastro was able to get away with his deception for so long due to the lack of regulation in the auction industry and people’s willingness to trust him as the top auctioneer. Greed and an inability to resist rigging his own auctions for profit eventually caught up to Mastro. His story serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when reputation and appearances are prioritized over integrity. It also highlighted the need for more accountability and oversight to protect bidders and consumers within the collectibles sphere. To this day, Bill Mastro remains one of the most infamous – if not the most infamous – fraudsters in the history of the baseball card industry.