What would you think if you got this reply from a major auction house?
 

I recently saw a lot in an auction by a major auction house with cards from multiple sets etc. They had one photo showing a lot of cards, from different sets, most hidden where you could not see condition, numbers names etc.

In the description they just said for example:

1952 Topps 13 diff, 1949 Leaf 18 diff, etc. No card numbers listed on any of them.

I emailed and asked what numbers they had from one of the sets and to send me a scan of two cards I could partially see in the photo.

I received no replies after three emails. I finally emailed the owner of the AH and received the below reply:

we will do our best but we are in the throes of the recent auction and we will try

The next day in my inbox was an email from the person I originally emailed. Figuring the owner had asked them to reply to my questions, that person replied:

Sorry, yes, we received your requests and it is on our list to do, but with the catalog auction just closing we are extremely busy and have not had a chance to do it yet.
We will try our best, but i can not promise anything.

Am I being unrealistic in my request? If an AH can not answer questions on an auction ending in a week because they are still dealing with an earlier auction maybe they should not run them so close together.

Your take?

Whenever I see an online auction where not all the cards are displayed, I assume there is something wrong. They're not hiding a bunch of PSA 7's and 8's under the PSA 4's. I assume all "hidden" cards are not on the top for a reason, and will almost ignore the value of those items when deciding what to bid on a lot.

In answer to your question, you as a potential bidder or consumer have every right to ask a question on the lot. They've taken the time to send you a couple of responses, but not taken the time to inspect the lot for you. My take is there is no gold in the hidden stuff, and they know it. Therefore there is no reason why they would point the obvious out to you. I'd move on.

Too many AH out there to deal with this nonsense and that value your $$$. Move on.

i once read (maybe on this board during my lurking days) that a great way to choose an auction house for your consignments is to see how they treat you like a bidder, like in the situation described here. if an AH doesn’t have the time or inclination to accurately describe an item and/or get a bidder the info he needs on items you want to bid on, why would you think that auction house will do things right when it is your items they are selling? too many auction houses treat their businesses like a part-time job.

I have only modest problems with this if it is their own items. It is bad service for sure and they will deflate their selling price, but at the end of the day they suffer the consequences for their actions. I have serious problems with this if is on behalf of a consignor.

"What would you think if you got this reply from a major auction house?"

I sure would like to know who it is so that I can evaluate doing business with them in the future.

Jeff

In our attempts to make money, we don't have time to attempt to make more.

Sorry. It's on the to do though.

I don’t understand how they don’t list the individual card #s in the auction description!

That’s like going to a restaurant and on the menu they state “We have LOTS of food.”

People here rarely seem to name who they are complaining about.

That's true, but it's a pretty tight community, which I appreciate. If you name someone, someone else comes to their defense and it can, on occasion, escalate.

Lets not forget that the slimy sellers always threaten to sue when called out.

I guess it depends on how many cards there are. If it's only a few, making a list seems like the sensible thing. But if it's me, and I'm listing something like I used to on Ebay, stuff like "400 different 1981 Topps" I'm not making a list. I usually didn't even have the lot assembled until after it sold After it sold I'd pull the cards from the few thousand I had. (Allowing me to take wantlists and maybe make sure more of a certain team were included than if I just did it randomly)

I'd think that to a big auction house, a boxful of lower grade commons from the 40's-50's is sort of like a big batch of 80's cards was to me. Stuff to sell, but not worth the time to list individually.

The important thing to file away is ... this is NOT who you turn your collection over to sell.

A major auction house (who will remain nameless) once sold a lot with a few W572 strips in it. I bid exactly what the strips were worth based on what they said was in the lot and historical sales - and one guy came over the top of me and went one bid higher. No big deal.

The buyer contacted me after the auction and mentioned that he received extra strips and cards (including several extra HOFers!) from the auction house when he got the lot from them.

In my opinion, this major auction house committed fraud against its consignor. If they had disclosed those extra strips and cards, my bid would have been at least $500 higher. Would I have won? Who knows.

But the consignor lost money. That is certain.

And this auction house won't get my business. That is certain.

Cheers,
Patrick

i shake my head when i read about auction houses who don't get invoices to bidders until 3-4 days after the auction ends. after all, that's the step in the process most important in getting money to the auction house ... letting customers know how much they owe.

Well...in their defense, sometimes it takes that long to make a shipping quote. Especially an auction house like Hunt's where you sometimes win ecclectic stuff such as seats, framed art, bats, and other oddball shaped items.

lol. ok, bob.

No...just stating the obvious....if all you won were graded cards it would be SUPER easy. However, have you seen the stuff they auction off? Actual seats to a stadium.....signs that are taller than you.....gumball machines......I could go on and on,.

I'm the most impatient ahole in the world at times, but it bears keeping in mind that while some of these AHs are pretty massive operations (Christies, Heritage), others are small operations run by a couple of people. These smaller shops are not Amazon and after a sale where they just sold 400 items, no doubt has a sh*tload of work to do for weeks. Your purchase is one of many.

By the way, not really commenting on the OP. Those responses are pretty lame.

I would not worry about that. You only need to add 'In my opinion' to any statement and there would be no standing for a suit.

In my opinion the threat to sue is a scare tactic. Even if what is being said is true who wants to have to pay a lawyer to go to court and prove it. That has been my experience anyway when I have been threatened with being sued.

The company threatening to sue also has the advantage of being able to write it off as a business expense if they actually fallow through.

AH
 

I once sent an email to a large AH and got a reply that it would be a few days before they got back to me. Whatever, I finally received a reply and they said that my consignments were not worth enough(figured they were both ~$500) since they were only taking items in excess of $1,000. I found it funny that I had won auctions from them that sold just recently for $360, $408 and $216.

I just started looking at the various auction houses in the past year or so and I was surprised to see how poor some item descriptions are.

I always think of the poor schlub whose prized possession is being so poorly advertised.

And it's not just a particular one or two. It seems to be an issue at many. Definitely food for thought when it comes time to sell my collection.

Another, observation...I get the impression most of these "big" auction houses try to operate on a skeleton crew staff. If customer service goes out the window just because you're in the middle of doing the one thing you're in business to do, you've got issues.

Yeah I don't get it. If I'm upset enough to create a thread I certainly won't be afraid to name who I'm upset with. Plus when a big seller or auction house is named they often come on to present their side and usually find a way to resolve the issue.

Sound like most businesses!! It's all about the bottom line. Where I work at, we are so understaffed it's not even funny. My boss has turned away good people looking for a job with phrases like "Are you sure you want to work here"? It also doesn't help that his paycheck is directly associated with the bottom line. Meanwhile, the poor souls left behind are being worked half to death to make up for the missing bodies.

If it were me, I might consider a smaller auction house where I would get tons of personal attention...

:)

Do you have one you can recommend?

:D

A few AH's are above reproach to many. Say something negative about an AH owned by someone's buddy and it's Dog Pile on the Rabbit.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym31m_9iErY


.

It takes no time at all to list the card numbers, especially in the 2 examples you referred to. Typing out the numbers of 13 or 18 cards would literally take less than a minute. LESS THAN A MINUTE. It is just beyond silly that they're giving you the runaround like that. And like everyone has already said, how comfortable could you ever be as a consignor if the AH won't even take a moment to provide the most rudimentary facts regarding a lot to potential bidders???

Well-played








(dick) :)

A certain auction house once explained to me that to describe every item in a large lot (that I was consigning) takes away some of the "mystery", and they felt they could get a higher price if the description remained somewhat vague.

I didn't agree, but what the hell did I know? And I was ultimately satisfied with the results they got. But I wonder if this might explain why they are reluctant to provide a detailed description - sort of the old "grab bag" idea that adds an element of gambling to the bidding process.

Pretty sure I know exactly what AH the OP is talking about, they also usually post large groups of signed baseballs. Something like "60 signed baseballs" and they'll name 10, including Mantle, Koufax, and Darrelll Evans. Got burned once by receiving nearly 50 Evans-caliber signed baseballs.

I think they do it purposefully, my suggestion is to assume they are hiding a ton of chaff with a few grains of wheat.

Somehow I never win at this particular AH, probably because I won't be this stupid again.

Earlywynnfan has the best avatar on the board!! As for the topic, live, learn and move on.

I can't even count how many times a AH has a lot of multiple cards and only show a few of them. They might describe a few cards and then say the rest are a few better or lesser.
When the lot arrives, there will be several cards that are in such poor condition that I end up throwing them out.
Instead of selling a lot of 50 cards where some of them are poor crap, then just sell the ones that you can describe and can pass off as a card.

I'm so happy for you that you have typing skills. I on the other hand do not. 18 items would be a bit longer assuming accuracy counted.

If an AH does not have time to describe all their items, then they are taking on too much. Instead of listing 10,000 items, try cutting it down a little.

At the fear of outing myself as one who dabbles in new and shinny stuff, I once sold a lot of 100 uniquely numbered cards (first and last serial numbers like 001/199 or 299/299...firsts and lasts something for some unknown reason I have always found appealing) with a fairly well respected action house. I documented each card, the player, there year and brand, and the number on an excel sheet which would have easily been linkable to their web description. It included virtually all star players and many hall of famers. They basically included a picture of four cards, a generic description (lots of stars) and that was about it. I am not sure I should have tried selling such a large accumulation, but they certainly didn't work very hard for me.

update
 

I am the OP of this thread and wanted to give an update and info answering some of your questions.

As of 11 PM Eastern on Thursday night I have not received a reply to my questions/request.

I hope to hear from them in the next two or three days or it will be too late.

The lot in question without outing it is, post war and is a group of cards something like (but not) say a group of 50's/60's Fleer issues where there would be say 140 cards from various years of the Fleer cards from 1959 to 1963, showing super star cards like the Babe Ruth cards, the Gehrigs, Cobbs, Williams #68, Adcock in 63 etc, then other cards "fanned" out where you can see some of the card, but no numbers visible etc.

Some of the cards may be SP's and have considerable value over and above the Ruth's, Gehrigs etc. while others are variations that collectors are looking for to complete their sets.

I doubt the cards are being hidden to hide the condition.

Of the 140 cards say, I asked for the numbers from one set that amount to a little over half of the cards or say about 75 numbers. The two cards I asked for scans of, I can see (not well enough to check out the variation) two cards, one partially that have variations that I need to see not just know the number to find out if one or both are the variation I am looking for in order to decide how much to bid.

I can understand an AH being busy after a major auction working to send out winnings, but is EVERYONE in the company packing and shipping? Certainly SOMEONE who is answering the phones or is handling the website could help with my request.

Or as an earlier point I brought up, if you have a major auction, maybe you should not have a monthly auction starting and ending soon after so you have time to service your customers.

To wrap this up, I sent a third email asking if it was too much trouble for them to email me with the numbers in the lot and the scan of two cards, they could just call me and read me the numbers.

I asked one specific question about the two cards I wanted scans of and asked for a reply about that as a minimum.

Surprise, surprise. It worked and an email hit my inbox this AM with the numbers and scan. It was sent from a Director of Acquisitions and I got a follow up email from the customer service rep(?) I originally contacted to be sure it was received.

So all's well that end's well, except I wish it did not take three emails with the first few replies not promising to reply.