When Karl Kissner’s aunt died in Defiance, Ohio in 2011, she had given her hundred-year-old family home to Karl and his cousins as an inheritance. The exterior of the house was dilapidated and the mess inside filled the rooms as if they had never been cleaned in a century. However, the dilapidated house couldn’t stop Karl and Karla, another family member, from looking for it because her aunt had left her a note that they would “find things that (they) never knew existed.” (Fox TV Business Network, “Strange Heritage”).
After cleaning out most of the interior, the attic was the last area Karl and Karla had to rummage through. But this attic was different from the rest of the house because it contained most of the old family heirlooms and the keys to possible family secrets. It wasn’t until they had removed some of the items stacked one on top of the other to the rafters that they discovered a small, dust-covered box against the far wall. When they opened it, they discovered more than 700 small photographs of about 30 famous early 20th century baseball players tied up with rope. These images included great players like Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Connie Mack, just to name a few. Among the giant horde, each player had approximately 12 to 16 other identical cards. Although Karl believed that none of them were actual baseball cards, since none resembled modern cards that include player stats, dates, and the name of the company that made them. Karl put the collection aside until they finished going through the rest of the attic.
Karl’s aunt, Jeanne Hench, was the daughter of Carl Hench, who had emigrated from Germany and was living the American dream as a successful meat salesman and store owner. She died in the 1940s, leaving most of his belongings in the attic of the family home, including the mysterious box of rare letters in mint condition. Mr. Hench’s grandson believed he received the cards as promotional items for a candy store.
Later, Karl opened the box and examined each one. He went online and researched each of the 30 players represented in the collection. The more he searched, the more he envisioned huge dollar signs flying into his bank account. Karl knew the next logical step was to get the 700 professionally authenticated. He called Peter Calderon, a baseball card expert in Dallas, Texas, and sent him samples of the collection.
After examining each card, Calderón nearly hit the ceiling when she realized that the cards were extremely rare antique originals in mint condition. Each one was identified as a series of 1910 “E98” cards. Karl told her that he had many more and sent them to Calderón.
Calderón immediately notified Karl that his cards were authentic and extremely valuable. After much jubilation, Calderón set them up with Heritage Auction to sell a fraction of the cards instead of the entire lot, because selling all 700 in total would flood the vintage baseball card collectors’ market, potentially reducing the value of the cards. . the multi-billion dollar baseball card industry. Over a period of time, Heritage Auction House sold the partial lot for a total of over $1,800,000. The rest was divided equally among twenty of Karl’s cousins to do as they pleased. Needless to say, Karl and each of his cousins could easily retire by auctioning off the rest of the cards, and that’s exactly what they will do, but gradually so as not to hurt the baseball card industry.
It has been estimated that the rest of the collection will sell for $3 million. The collection Karl discovered earned the name “Black Swamp Find” to link the geographic and historical area of Northwest Ohio to add notoriety to the vast collection of some of the oldest and rarest baseball card collections.