Heritage Live Auction -- Black Swamp debacle

[botn]

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. 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.

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by botn

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. 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.

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.

[insidethewrapper]

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.

[Matthew H]

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.