Heritage Live Auction -- Black Swamp debacle
 

Estimated to go for $1 million -- it went for about 240K instead. Perhaps if Heritage hadn't had the entire find graded at once, thereby increasing the population of E98s exponentially and lowering the value of all the E98s, it might have gotten to $1 million. Instead, all big bidders apparently felt they could buy high graded E98s at another time. And now the remainder of the Black Swamp find is hugely devalued and a $3 million+ haul is an impossibility.

Well, at least Heritage received a huge amount of international and national publicity and that surely triggered dozens of cold calls and new finds. And this helped the consigners of the Black Swamp find how?

It was definitely a dumb move to have those cards all available at once. Good for HA but bad for the consignors' family.

When I spoke with the executor of the estate one of his main concerns was for transparency with this find. He made it very clear to me that he didn't want hobbyists to get burnt by releasing some cards very slowly. I thought that was very classy of him and it was indicative of our conversation and the way the family is. I believe they were happy with the bidding where it was when the live bidding opened. Sure, everyone hopes to get more for the valuables but there are actually some kind and good people in this world. I wish our hobby was so nice sometimes. Sometimes it's not about going for the jugular it's about doing the right thing.

The family was very happy when the live bidding opened? What does that mean? Were they very happy when the live bidding closed after being told that the $1 million estimate was 760K too high?

But if the family insisted upon releasing the full extent of the find instead of selling the cards a bit at the time then the fault lies with them -- assuming they were given good advice.

It means they were happy with where the prices were when the Live bidding opened. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

If somebody in the hobby found these they would have done this much differently. This family was outside the hobby and likely didn't understand the nuances the way we would.

That said, if the cards went for 25% of their estimated value then clearly something didn't work out. The family may be happy because they have nothing into them and didn't even know they had them until a few months ago. I guess there are going to be some bargains down the road.

If cows shi* butter we wouldn't have to churn.

If my uncle had boobs he would be my aunt.

LOL!


It really is hard to complain about finding cards in an attic and walking away with $250,000..

The shrewd move would have been to sell these suckers periodically. I understand it's in the best interest of the hobby not to "sneak" in these cards, but as an auction house your best interest should always be getting the best possible (legal) price.

To me, the shrewd move is to give the consignor all possible information and then do as they ask, within your boundaries. I think most auctioneers would agree. Otherwise, the consignor can take their wares elsewhere.

I feel sorry to the owner's family if they planned to use the money for college funds of their grandkids.... now the funds are only enough to buy a few stationaries from Walmart til they graduate from high school.

No one can possibly believe this family is happy after last night.

It would have been fraudulent not to disclose the material fact of other high grade E98s in their possession when trying to sell purportedly "low pop" cards.

My guess is they were wary of the indictments of the Legendary principals, and just wanted to make sure they weren't going to stand in front of a federal jury.

:D

Really? So if they only had 1 or 2 graded...the pop would still be very low...probably unique. Technically they don't know how the others will eventually grade. This would be fraudulent?

Does this have anything to do with that whole "prudent" man stuff?

I would think they went with Heritage because of reputation they have and how big and experienced they are and if they told me I could get close to a million for these cards and only got 250,000 I think I would be a little disappointed even though it was money i didn't have. Would have made me think I should have gone elswhere. I would have trusted there knowledge of the market when they told me I could get a million. Always factors that dictate what something will sell for but the gap between a million and 250 is not even close. Still a nice chunk of money they never had

Estimate a little fanciful?
 

The estimate I saw in the paper (a national press release) was that the lots had an estimate of about $500,000 total, and that the bidding on these lots reached $566,000. One million seems an out of line estimate to me. In the long run I think the family did good, as long as they time the release of future lots/singles in a way that will maintain interest in this incredible find.

Brian

My smiley face was intended to connote sarcasm. Maybe I should've used the winky eye!

I think they did it the right way. It was honest. For what it is worth, the three lots sold for about a half a million. The Wagner was $238k with juice, the set was over $280k with juice, and the other lot went for over 40k with juice. Those numbers were about what I expected given what is lined up behind them. Still impressive! The other factor is Heritage got a ton of press due to the enormity of the find which would not have happened if they slowly leaked them. It is hard to know how that will impact all this in the short and long term. The bottom line in my book is that it was the honest way to do it.
JimB

I'm now looking at the auction pages of the Black Swamp cards and unless this is an error of some sort, those cards are already up for sale again. Each auction has a "Make Offer to the Owner" option. Then is states:

You now have the opportunity to acquire very rare items that may not be auctioned again for some time by making an anonymous offer that will make the owner sell. The owner of this item has indicated that they are entertaining offers on this item.

Could this mean Heritage themselves won the cards and are now selling them again? Something stinks here or am I missing something? If these items are up for sale, then it appears the winners weren't very serious about owning the cards.

http://sports.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7057&lotNo=80001

http://sports.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7057&lotNo=80002

ha ha...I'm a little slow this morning...too many celebratory gin and tonics last night!!!!

Well, given what I read in that other thread about Heritage that seems possible.

The consignors must be disappointed. I think this entire thing seems to have benefited Heritage much more than the consignors.

Had they spaced these out over time they could have gotten more money IMHO.

But there is no denying that anytime you take a set that is collected by probably 100-200 people and dump a ton more material on the market prices will be tough to keep high.

Great point Leon the consignor is in charge as an auctioneer you can only advise.

Disclosure
 

I don't think any seller of baseball cards has a duty to disclose all the other cards he or she has and the grades or condition when selling. As long as there are no untruthful statements made - like this is the only high grade example - then there is no fraud.

Easy for you to say -- you weren't told the cards would fetch $3 million. And it wouldn't have been dishonest to sell them slower without getting them all graded at once -- unless a material misrepresentation was made.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Heritage is offering this on every past lot they have ever sold. They become the messenger between you and the buyer to negotiate a sale on anything sold in the past. This is not exclusive to the Black Swamp find. It in no way means Heritage owns the cards it would be more of an agent situation between the buyer and seller.

And if Heritage, with the consignors' permission, had not disclosed the size of the find and not graded all the cards at once, there would have been a thread attacking them for fraud and misrepresentation. Seems like Heritage should have just told the consignors to take their crumby cards elsewhere. Boy, an auction house cannot win with Jeff around. :D Now cards cards selling for "too little" is a problem. YIKES!!!

I also do not think the printed estimates for the 3 lots totaled 1 million. Don't have the catalog any longer. I recall the Wagner stated 200K and up. That said I thought the cards would sell for more, not that they underperformed. The E98s were not the only items which did not command top dollar last night.

OK. I now see that they do it on more then those two auctions, but they do bid on their own auctions, so its still possible they are the winners any of those auctions.

Not to get off topic, but how about some of the other ridiculous prices? Ruth ball $388k, Ruth bat $388k, 1912 Sox Trophy $239k, 69/70 Topps basketball set $209k, Ruth signed certificate $101k, Ali trunks, Cap Anson bat, etc, etc...all six figure items. Incredible prices. The hobby looks very strong to me.

As I said, as long as a material misrepresentation wasn't made Heritage would be fine. This is more of a sales strategy issue than an ethical one obviously. And I agree the auction as a whole didn't do well. I suspect the same of Legendary's auction.

"fraudulent not to disclose the material fact of other high grade E98s in their possession when trying to sell purportedly "low pop" cards."???

That's a fraudulent act??? yeah right! Come on!!!!

If u have three Honus Wagner signed t206 and want to sell one, I am 100% certain u wouldn't want to tell people u have two more to sell later.

The pre-auction estimate I saw was $ 200k for the Wagner, not $ 1million. They only auctioned off I think 37 cards last night . They will be auctioning the others over a period I believe of a couple of years, many 9's of Cobb etc

They still have 100's of cards to auction off and they will in the end be in the millions range, already over 1/2 million with just 37 cards.

Wow... There's still 670 more cards, roughly the same condition as the 28 that sold last night. Herritage estimate was waaayyy high, even if they had only found one set IMO. You're talking 37k per card and a couple were in fair condition. Compare this set to the pirate set that sold. I can't even imagine this set being worth 1/4 that. It's just condition rarity and hype. I'm sure Leon's right, I'm sure the family is super happy. Don't forget they're regular people. They probably still can't believe some rich guy is willing to pay so much for something grandpa forgot to throw away 100 years ago.

I talked to a HA personnel last night, he said they have been getting low ball offers for those "lesser" grade Black Swamp find cards after the auction. One offer was $5k for a PSA-9 Wagner and the consignor actually accepted the offer after the auction ends last nite. I guess the consignor learnt his lesson and try to dump those cards to the market before they crash become trash.

I don't think the consignor family would waste their time for those endless interviews if they know they would get ~$1M for the whole collection.

in agreement, when the doyle error came out, the first guy to find it didnt tell everyone to make it fair for everyone in the hobby to sell them to him at a fair price, he tried to buy up other doyles at the regular price. was that dishonest? no, he used info he had to his own betterment.

heritage dropped the ball on this one, fuuuuumble!

to do it this way,they would have been better off to burn all the wagner's except for the one graded 10, and put a million dollar price tag on it. what is the difference between that, and only disclosing the 10 wagner, putting a million dollar price tag on it, until it sells, then put out a 9 wagner, etc, then another 9, the prices will be less for each subsequent one, but the buyer has paid for FOB, (first on block).

something tells me if any auction house would have made the find themselves and owned it themselves, it would have been sold differently because in this instance the auction house looked out for the buyers as much as the sellers by disclosing the pop number and grades of all the cards beforehand, but an auction house that owned the cards outright, would have only looked out for one entity, THEMSELVES, which is fine, but let's do the same thing for the consignor then in this instance that they would have done for themselves. heritage or not, any auction house would have used the cards to their own advantage had they owned them outright.

How is "this is the only high grade example" truthful here? There were 700 high grade examples found. They could've stretched the truth by saying "This is the only highly graded example" if they only graded one in the find. Thankfully, since they weren't "in" the hobby, the odds of them being scumbags was lower then we're used too.

I understand why the "Black Swamp Find" was publicized: to get publicity for this auction and Heritage. But can anyone say with a straight face that if Heritage had simply announced that in its upcoming live auction that they would have a Wagner 10 and a Cobb 9 in it they both wouldn't have gone for well more than 100K apiece -- without Heritage being in every newspaper in the country? It's not like news of these cards wouldn't have made the rounds to every collector in the hobby in a minute flat. I just can't see the logic in how this was handled except to think that Heritage's interests and handling of the auction were inconsistent with the consigners' interests and bottom line.

these multiple wagners at very high grade were so far better than any previous ones, that it made little difference to sell them slowly, or fast, because anyone who wants one, now knows they exist in these quantity, and they can't get any anywhere else, but they know the seller is going to sell, so they will just wait for the next auction and pick up a 9, or the next auction, next, etc.

so flooding the market all at once, or "flooding" it slowly over a period of a year or two isn't going to make much of a difference.

since the family had the market cornered on these high grade wagners, they should have put a high price on the 10, and refuse to sell any 9's until the 10 sells first at their price, then anyone that wants a high grade wagner for that set, can't get one unless they sell for the familys price. There would be no where else to go, they had a bottleneck but they blew it. an opportunity squandered on a terrific chance to cash in on a cornered market. but heritage knows what they are doing. fail.

Well, this is not entirely true - I believe this family could be happy after last night. There is such a thing as not being consumed by greed. There are families, and there are people, that still have this type of character and perspective.

Just my opinion of course.

.

One is not "consumed by greed" if they're led to believe their cards are worth a million bucks and they only see 240K, comeon. You can't possibly blame them for being unhappy about the auction.

I'm going to have to disbelieve this statement for now, since you didnt accidentally rip the back of your jeans off reaching for your wallet when you heard 5k. The "gem mint" version just sold for 40x that number.

Also, Heritage is too money grubby (signed, Matt Hall) to accept that kind of low ball offer. They could get more then that on eBay.

They'd have to average close to 4k per card to hit around the 3mil estimate mark. That estimate was too high. In another thread, a board member estimated 25k for each Cobb. That seems like a more reasonable number.

Umm...

could it be investors (not collectors) who buy high end material might be a little gun shy of auction houses right now as well? (b/c of the mastro fiasco)

Joshua

then they could have just given the cards away then, i would have taken one.


there were 20 members of this family. their cadillac turned into a used hundai.

They also might know that there are 20 more similar sets available.

And on the other side of the coin.....


http://news.yahoo.com/rare-baseball-...063544522.html

"A sampling of the treasure trove that had been untouched for 100 years was sold Thursday night during the National Sports Collectors Convention in Baltimore, Md. The 37 baseball cards featuring the likes of Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Honus Wagner fetched a combined $566,132 in brisk online and live bidding. They were expected to bring about $500,000."

Um, what?

That's what I thought. The auction exceeded expectations. They (the family) are happy. The hobby is healthy. Millions of $$$$ were spent last night. A lot of good press for the hobby.

Does Calvindog think all the cards were auctioned last night ? Only 37 of them !!!

As a side question, Jeff, were you able to pick up that Azora Cobb panel?

"It is nothing short of the most startling and significant find in baseball card collecting history: a near complete set (27/30) of 1910 E98 baseball cards – #1 on the PSA Set Registry – and it is the unquestioned headline in Heritage Auctions’ Aug. 2 Vintage Sports Collectibles Platinum Night Signature® Auction, taking place as part of the National Sports Collectors Convention at Baltimore, MD’s famed Camden Yards. The three lots from the find are estimated to bring $600,000+."

And no, did not bid on the La Azora PCs....

I thought it was 28 cards.

I think it was 27 in one set, the Wagner in another lot and then 9 in the last lot.

NM