I'm a little confused by the "Black Swamp Find" and this latest auction highlights my concern.
The original poster said "I feel bad to the owner who owned the nicest E98 set from Black Swamp Find losing $200k+ in 5 yrs." But, there were a number of E98s sold in this Memory Lane auction that were not previously sold (at least not publicly) through Heritage Auctions. There are a few examples, but here is the E98 Green Davis PSA 7:
https://memorylaneinc.com/site/bids/...e?itemid=44260
The PSA Serial Number 19872196 appropriately places this Davis within the Davis E98 Swamp population based on the sales of that card through Heritage, but you will notice that it never appears in their prior listings:
https://www.ha.com/c/search-results....rch-A-K-071316
I also do not think it came from a previously sold SGC version (but, I could be proven wrong on this, I suppose, if someone has contrary evidence).
In short, it does look like to me that a number of these E98 Swamp cards had not previously been sold to the public. But not only do I not think this was necessarily the "nicest E98 set" -- which was sold here and may very well still be together somewhere....
The Near Set that Heritage Sold as a Group:
https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball/1...ription-071515
The Color Variations that Heritage Sold as a Group:
https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball/1...ription-071515
...but we don't really know how the consignor to Memory Lane did based on a prior sale of many of the cards.
Still, I don't really take issue with the notion of the prices going down so hard lately. I am more interested in whether there is some funny business going on in terms of additional "new" E98 Swamp cards being "leaked" into the public in different ways in an attempt to address the concerns raised about maximizing sale prices -- e.g., by not going only through Heritage and in this case going through Memory Lane.
Any thoughts?