Mark--I agree with what you are saying about the write-up. This is not a problem with only Goodwin however; the hype is pervasive in almost every catalog. I'm simply saying that I just ignore the hype and look at the item. Could it have affected the bidding, maybe, but probably not much if at all.
The practice that annoys me the most is, when examining the rarity of vintage cards, auction houses quote how many have been graded by SGC and PSA. This is truely meaningless. Most of the great Old Judge collections, as an example, have very few of their cards graded. Being the highest graded Old Judge is being the big fish in a very small pond. The result that I thought was really crazy in the Goodwin auction last night was the N172 Galvin PSA5 going for $9,400. That is not a particularily scarce card and, even though not graded, there are certainly better copies out there.
While I'm at it, another practice that gets to me is lot descriptions that seem to be judged on how many flowery phrases can be jammed in to each paragraph. A one sentence example from the upcoming Legendary Auction's description of the restore-reversed Wagner is shown below (not trying to pick on Legendary--I could have found examples in virtually any current catalog):
"A conservator’s earnest attempt to bring back the card’s signs of aging resulted in the sight one sees, today, when viewing it. "
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