Agreed 100%, most yard Walnuts that I have come across when I have to give a bid for it's removal are very low grade lumber with many defects. I get such a kick out of this trying to get rich quick selling Black Walnut, it is a speculative game that your going to lose more than you win. It is hard to convince people that their Walnut tree is valueless, they don't believe you till they see all the decay in the main stem, most standing Walnuts suffer from this, old age and rot.
I am not a sawyer, but I have taken down trees in backyards for a few sawyers who had to pay us and the homeowner, the potential was there to make money but when it was all said and done, the sawyer was in hole big time because of defects in the wood that weren't noticeable to the eye.
I know what these sawmill guys are looking for when it comes to trees, these 1K per stem trees may be for real but that would be for prime grade veneer, the so called super stick Walnut, a one in ten thousand tree that is not going to be growing in a backyard, any yard tree will most likely have metal in it, my sawyer found this out the hard way.
Think about it for a minute, ever since the landing of the Pilgrims, what has happened, cutting of the timber on the land came first, followed by the development of the land mostly for farming , the best trees have long since disappeared except for maybe a few isolated pockets of native undisturbed timber, the chances of one these prime grade Walnut growing in a backyard is wishful thinking, dream on, you might do better to play the lottery than trying to sell Black Walnut.
Walnut is not even that good of firewood, I will not throw it in with a load of mixed wood, it smells to me and gives off an oily kind of residue when we tried to burn in the stove for our shop.
Larry