Black Swamp Find? Tell me more!

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

Hi Bob,

As I have posted twice, there were more cards in the find than what was disclosed by anyone giving interviews. The part of the family who sold initially opted to have Heritage let the hobby know up front how many cards were available for sale rather than have Heritage submit these slowly over the years. Maybe the other family members preferred to have the cards as opposed to the money and 7 years later changed their minds???

Clearly looking at the population reports in 2023 on the E98 set with SGC and PSA numbers have blown up showing 4,000 cards graded and even if we decide that cards were submitted more than once and/or possibly broken out of one holder and sent to the other grading service, that still adds up to a lot more than the original find as being the only cards from the find. If PSA had graded 628 E98s up until the find, let's say SGC had graded 700. That leaves roughly 2,700 E98s submitted between 2012 and 2023. If 750 of those were from Heritage that leaves roughly 2,000 more E98s to go to those TPGers.

I had great interest in the find because I was hoping to add the lower graded Hall of Famers from the find to my own collection. One interview did include a vague reference that could have been interpreted two different ways suggesting there might be more cards. Nobody followed up on it or maybe they tried and it was shutdown because the focus was on what Heritage was bringing to auction.

It is really not my place to go into details but I spoke with the dealer who was initially part of the deal buying out the back half of the collection and his words to me were that there was a larger quantity of cards in the back half of the collection than in the portion which Heritage offered for sale.

Okay, so you're saying there were way more cards, but pretty much everyone kept it secret as to how many there were, and are still doing it for the most part, despite there now really being no reason to not come out with the truth? And you're also saying that the stories about all these cards from the Find being pretty much pristine and in great condition is not true either? Otherwise, shouldn't there be way more E98 graded cards today in the 8-9-10 grades?

I don't doubt what you're telling the truth as you know it, but why all the friggin' secrecy? If the family that inherited the cards were so worried about possibly killing the market for them if they were all released at once, then why did they release the nicest condition cards first? If someone were sitting on that big of a collection, wouldn't it make more sense to want to slowly start and release some of the lower condition cards first? If the previous highest graded E98 cards ever graded had only been 7s, release some of the cards that were in the 5-6-7 range first. People would pay top dollar for those cards as they were close to the known highest condition E98 cards out there at that time. And then slowly in the coming months/years, progressively release some of the nicer and nicer cards as you go along, and try to hold onto the 9s and 10s till the last. Here's a case where going to someone like Heritage probably works against you. Despite them saying they were releasing these cards over time to maximize income to the family, I think it was more of Heritage wanting to get the word out about these cards and maximize money for themselves, in a short time frame. Of course, members of the family could have easily gone along and wanted to quickly max out what money they could receive from this inheritance as well, and that does make perfect sense and help justify what I think was otherwise maybe bad advice from Heritage on how to handle this Find. But is still doesn't even begin to explain why no one would eventually mention how many cards there really were in this Find then, unless that was part of the hold back and delay releasing them into the hobby tactic, to hopefully maximize and get even more money by spreading out the release of the cards and not letting people know how many there truly were. But again, if you're using that logic and thinking, why sell all the higher condition cards first? If someone just sold a couple first ever seen E98s graded 8, and they bring in record prices for E98 cards, just think what a couple 9s would then bring in the following year or so.

But you're certain that there were a lot more E98 cards in the find, and that there was a different dealer involved in buying a good chunk of the balance of the Find from the family. Okay, but the fact that I've never heard or seen anything about this before in any published articles or stories, and even you are hesitant to name the dealer involved in this so-called sale/purchase, just makes the whole thing seem really sketchy. You're basically saying to just believe the story on almost pure faith, with the only potential evidence to help support the claim being the number of E98 cards that are now graded. Even though the increased number of E98 cards being graded after the Black Swamp Find could also possibly be attributed to more people getting their E98 cards graded following the buzz and excitement of the Black Swamp Find, likely aided by many people now looking to possibly cash in on the prices these new to market E98s were bringing in, as well as just the natural increase/addition to the number of E98 cards that would have been sent in for grading anyway. It's not like people aren't constantly submitting other never before graded pre-war cards during this past decade or so either. I can see the underlying logic to the argument, but without really knowing the accurate number of E98 cards that were in the Black Swamp Find, and why there seems to be so much secrecy still around that, it is somewhat hard to solely attribute the graded card increase to primarily the Black Swamp Find alone. Something doesn't smell right, there shouldn't be all this secrecy about the number of cards in the Find, at least it hasn't been necessary for any reason I can think of for quite a few years now. Like ai said, I don't doubt you at all, but something still doesn't make sense to me. Oh well.