Black Swamp Find? Tell me more!

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

Hopefully I will hit on everything you wrote/asked. I am not asking you to just believe me because you do not know me and I am not even trying to convince you. Only trying to share what is appropriate for me to share based on what I have been told. The dealer who bought the back half of the collection from the family is a member here as I have seen him post at one time. The guy who ended up with them, from him, and blowing up the pop report even more than it already was, is Evan Mathis. The dealer who told me about the back half of the BSF was brought in as a consultant before the cards were sold to Mathis. He is not someone who would make up something like this or lie to me. Further when he told me I was taken aback and relieved I did not make my BSF purchases.

I have no idea when the cards were divided up and if the family did it on their own or with Heritage and for all I know Heritage was only told about the 750 that they got. I have no idea how the back half of the cards graded as a whole but from what I was told..yeah I know...the condition of the cards was similar to the initial find. There were some lower grade cards that had stains on the back, poorly centered cards and cards with indentations and corner dings from storage but there were plenty of 8s and better.

I cannot speak for Heritage, the family or anyone else involved so I have no idea why it was kept quiet that there were twice as many cards in the find as initially reported. What I know is that Evan Mathis was grading and selling these and they were not cards he bought out of Heritage. I really think the family who held them had every intention of keeping them but then decided to cash out when they saw the numbers that were achieved. If Heritage knew this I guess it is for each of us to decide if we were mislead.

I think if you look at the pop report it would be easy to conclude that it was not 1s through 3s that were being graded since 2012 but 5s and above and the majority of the 4,000 cards graded are 5 and above. I have not looked that closely at the pop figures but glancing at them it appeared to look that way.

I know of one dealer who has seen the back half, I have no idea what the plan is for introduction into the market is but one has to be very careful about that. Imagine what introducing 50 more Red Cobb PSA 98's would do to the price.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Casey2296

I know of one dealer who has seen the back half, I have no idea what the plan is for introduction into the market is but one has to be very careful about that. Imagine what introducing 50 more Red Cobb PSA 98's would do to the price.

The back half of the find started to be introduced into the hobby as far back as 2019. Quite certain all of the cards that were intending to be graded have been graded. These cards have been moved privately as well as through many of the auction houses.

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

The back half of the find started to be introduced into the hobby as far back as 2019. Quite certain all of the cards that were intending to be graded have been graded. These cards have been moved privately as well as through many of the auction houses.

So they're all in the market now?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Casey2296

So they're all in the market now?

Chase,

I hear you. That is a crazy story though. But if two of you have heard of it, I guess I have to believe it as well. So it sounds like it is not widely known if the entire Find has made it to the market yet either. If not, that is just crazy. It has been over a decade now since the BSF occurred, and one would normally expect that all the cards would have made it to the market long before now.

So how many cards were there in this Find? You've talked about someone buying the back half, and if Heritage got the 750 or so up front to sell, does that mean the 1,400-1,500 number mentioned by some others is somewhat accurate then? Or is that "back half" comment just a phrase someone threw out, and not really indicative that the 750 or so E98 cards that Heritage got to sell up front was about half the Find after all? Because if the Find really did amount to about 1,400-1,500 E98 cards, the combined PSA, SGC, and CSG population reports currently show a total of 4,106 E98 cards have been graded to date. In that case, the Black Swamp Find cards don't even make up half of the graded E98s out there. So using rounded numbers, if before the BSF there were about 750 graded E98s out there, then the 750 Heritage got graded took that number to about 1,500. And since there are around 4,100 graded E98s out there today, that means an additional 2,600 or so (4,100 - 1,500) have been graded since the BSF hit the news. And if about 750 of those represent the 'back half" of the total BSF, that means around 1,850 E98 cards (2,600 - 750) had nothing to do with the BSF at all. That is about 2-1/2 times the number of cards in the supposed "back half" of the Find. So at least it seems I may have been right about there being a lot of non-BSF E98's that were out there that came in to be graded. And I'm going to guess there may be a lot more ungraded E98 cards out there yet.

Never heard about this "back half" of the BSF before, just what the mainstream articles, stories, and the Strange Inheritance TV show all kept saying. Learned something new then. Would still like to hear all the real details at some point though, but it doesn't sound like we will.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by BobC

Chase,

I hear you. That is a crazy story though. But if two of you have heard of it, I guess I have to believe it as well. So it sounds like it is not widely known if the entire Find has made it to the market yet either. If not, that is just crazy. It has been over a decade now since the BSF occurred, and one would normally expect that all the cards would have made it to the market long before now.

So how many cards were there in this Find? You've talked about someone buying the back half, and if Heritage got the 750 or so up front to sell, does that mean the 1,400-1,500 number mentioned by some others is somewhat accurate then? Or is that "back half" comment just a phrase someone threw out, and not really indicative that the 750 or so E98 cards that Heritage got to sell up front was about half the Find after all? Because if the Find really did amount to about 1,400-1,500 E98 cards, the combined PSA, SGC, and CSG population reports currently show a total of 4,106 E98 cards have been graded to date. In that case, the Black Swamp Find cards don't even make up half of the graded E98s out there. So using rounded numbers, if before the BSF there were about 750 graded E98s out there, then the 750 Heritage got graded took that number to about 1,500. And since there are around 4,100 graded E98s out there today, that means an additional 2,600 or so (4,100 - 1,500) have been graded since the BSF hit the news. And if about 750 of those represent the 'back half" of the total BSF, that means around 1,850 E98 cards (2,600 - 750) had nothing to do with the BSF at all. That is about 2-1/2 times the number of cards in the supposed "back half" of the Find. So at least it seems I may have been right about there being a lot of non-BSF E98's that were out there that came in to be graded. And I'm going to guess there may be a lot more ungraded E98 cards out there yet.

Never heard about this "back half" of the BSF before, just what the mainstream articles, stories, and the Strange Inheritance TV show all kept saying. Learned something new then. Would still like to hear all the real details at some point though, but it doesn't sound like we will.

The dealer that spoke to me of the back half of the find indicated there were more cards held back by the family that opted to keep them than were graded originally by Heritage. If Heritage graded 750 of them then there were more than 1,500 in all found in the home.

I am confident that cards were submitted more than once, especially the Hall of Famers. I am also certain that cards were graded by PSA and then broken out and sent to SGC when they were not happy with the grades. The more than 4,000 cards graded between both pop reports includes many BSF cards that were seen more than once. Someone posted that prior to the BSF being submitted there were roughly 627 cards in PSA's pop report. I would guess there were at least that many, if not more, in SGC's. Let's assume pre BSF there had been 1,500 cards in the combined pop reports. Another 1,500 from the find which leaves roughly 1,000 other submissions of E98s most of which I would argue are cards being resubmitted or broken out and sent to the other grading company.

Again, no idea why the choice was made to not state upfront that more than 1500 cards were found but only 750 would be coming to auction other than the family having kept that a secret from Heritage or that there was a concern it might have a negative impact on the 750 that were going to auction.

[Yoda]

Just curious, but I hold a BSF M. Brown PSA7 with an orange background and am wondering if this color makes it more valuable than, say, the more common red.

[ullmandds]

Originally Posted by Yoda

Just curious, but I hold a BSF M. Brown PSA7 with an orange background and am wondering if this color makes it more valuable than, say, the more common red.

i'd say so

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by Yoda

Just curious, but I hold a BSF M. Brown PSA7 with an orange background and am wondering if this color makes it more valuable than, say, the more common red.

Yes.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

The dealer that spoke to me of the back half of the find indicated there were more cards held back by the family that opted to keep them than were graded originally by Heritage. If Heritage graded 750 of them then there were more than 1,500 in all found in the home.

I am confident that cards were submitted more than once, especially the Hall of Famers. I am also certain that cards were graded by PSA and then broken out and sent to SGC when they were not happy with the grades. The more than 4,000 cards graded between both pop reports includes many BSF cards that were seen more than once. Someone posted that prior to the BSF being submitted there were roughly 627 cards in PSA's pop report. I would guess there were at least that many, if not more, in SGC's. Let's assume pre BSF there had been 1,500 cards in the combined pop reports. Another 1,500 from the find which leaves roughly 1,000 other submissions of E98s most of which I would argue are cards being resubmitted or broken out and sent to the other grading company.

Again, no idea why the choice was made to not state upfront that more than 1500 cards were found but only 750 would be coming to auction other than the family having kept that a secret from Heritage or that there was a concern it might have a negative impact on the 750 that were going to auction.

That is crazy Chase. I know we're only guessing on the number of different E98 then that really have been graded, and the reason(s) why the family kept the total number of cards in the Find a secret. Deep down I would think that at some point money had something to do with it, especially since it seems like in the end, money has something to do with pretty much just about everything. LOL

Just goes to show how you can still learn something new almost every day. So, of the 4,200 or so that are included on TPG pop reports (forget Beckett also shows 102 total graded E98s, and who knows how many may still be sitting in a GAI holder), I would hazard a guess that the actual number of different E98s that have been graded is somewhere between 3,000 to 4,000, after backing off the crossovers, re-grades, and so on, and maybe closer to the 3,000 figure at the end of the day. Sound about right to you?

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by BobC

That is crazy Chase. I know we're only guessing on the number of different E98 then that really have been graded, and the reason(s) why the family kept the total number of cards in the Find a secret. Deep down I would think that at some point money had something to do with it, especially since it seems like in the end, money has something to do with pretty much just about everything. LOL

Just goes to show how you can still learn something new almost every day. So, of the 4,200 or so that are included on TPG pop reports (forget Beckett also shows 102 total graded E98s, and who knows how many may still be sitting in a GAI holder), I would hazard a guess that the actual number of different E98s that have been graded is somewhere between 3,000 to 4,000, after backing off the crossovers, re-grades, and so on, and maybe closer to the 3,000 figure at the end of the day. Sound about right to you?

Hi Bob,

Yes you are right...it always comes down to money. Maybe the family who was holding out really had no interest in selling and thought the estimates the auction house gave were outlandish? The members of the family I saw interviewed seem like good people. Once the sales concluded they might have changed their mind and looked for a buyer. Interesting that they did not offer them to Heritage since they did so well with them.

I think the actual number of unique E98s having been graded would be much closer to 3,000 than 4,000, if I had to take a wild guess. You can see some high grade E98s listed on eBay right now that are not deemed BSF on the label but when you read the description the seller states the card came from a second offering from members of the family.

The find, to me, is still one of the great ones in my time in the hobby. I still have not added a single one to my collection but before I am done I will add several. My preference would be to get ones from those Heritage graded. After reading up about Mathis I would never buy one that went through his hands. Ironic that a virgin find like that ended up with him. Something just so wrong about that. Again...all about the money.

Chase

[BobC]

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[RCMcKenzie]

For me, the bsf cards are like Gauguin woodcuts, I don't know the open editions by his great nephew and others, from the very rare Christie's supposedly original ones. They all look the same to me, and they are expensive.

I haven't bought any e98's since all this happened. My joke is, "Are they still making the, I mean releasing the cards, releasing the cards?"