French law and views may be different than American. This case may have no bearing on that Honus Wagner bought in Iowa City.

What if the market moved because I got lucky when I bought it?

Real life example: I bought a 1951B PSA 8 Mays for $48k in June 2020. A few months later, another example sold at auction for $300k+. If I sold mine a few months later, should I go back to the seller and share some of the sales proceeds?

A huge story from my neighborhood card shop during the heyday of my childhood collecting (we were all jealous). It was a kid in the know who bought it and a woman filling in for the owner for a short time who had no clue. As far as I remember, the card ended up being signed by Nolan and auctioned off for charity. The card shop got publicity and a charity got the proceeds. We also got a kick out of it because it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...

I love this idea...theoretically.

Somehow I feel it would quickly turn into a situation where a family member of the store owner or the owner themselves wrap me into a lingering lawsuit for the full amount and it sits in litigation for years.

It's sad, but often doing the right thing backfires in a spectacular way. Perhaps, one could use a legal intermediary to provide a gift with no additional information as to why. These situations often remind me of the commonality of lawsuits when a lottery group wins the prize. Sometimes the holder of the tickets wins on one that was bought individually or falsefully states it was, or in the other couple cases where someone did not put in their share the week it won and still wants the winnings?

I remember one in which that happened and the winners still gave them a substantial amount but they still sued. So hard to judge how a person will respond to this situation.

This specific instance that the thread was based on does seem ok to me IF indeed the gardener story is untrue. If that pans out then it would show an intent to defraud.

The part about offering 300k plus would be more than honorable for the dealer if this is a case of them just completing due diligence to get the best price. How many others would have enlisted carbon-14 dating to find the truth? Based on the initial estimates of the first two auction houses prior to the dealers additional work, the buyer had provided a far more than fair purchase price.

It's now the kids seeing green and wanting a piece of something they never wanted in the first place that now defers back to why the prior imaginary bookstore owner payment would blow up in someone's face.

Caveat Emptor..

Nuff said..

Plainly no. You paid an appropriate price at the time.

Nobody seems to have brought up the biggest issue.....was this mask stolen from Gabon years ago? If so, shouldn't this mask be returned to the rightful owners?

I'll bet the original owners are dead.

Only if you want to give back this country to the people who were conquered by the English/Americans. :eek:

Don’t forget the Dutch, the Spanish, and the French!

Probably a few others mixed in too.

Not to mention, long before Europeans came to this continent, the various Native American tribes were routinely attacking and stealing land from each other.

I'm glad someone brought finally brought this up. Regardless of whether you think the guy who spent $157 on it did so un/ethically, the macro ethics angle is very interesting to me.

Although the 'owners' would be long dead, it sure sounds like an extremely significant cultural relic that would be best to sell to/return to Gabon for display in a museum... especially since the article mentions that the French guy's relative was a freaking colonialist governor.



The couple claims this guy essentially stole the mask from them, and then they turned down 300k from the guy after the sale, presumably because they want all of the money for themselves.

Man, that's a startling amount of hypocrisy to me when your ancestor most likely took it himself as a spoil of oppressive colonialism.

If anyone deserves the money or mask, it'd be the people of Gabon.

Sounds like a bit of Gabonese karma finally swinging back to the family to me.

Is he even still around?

This chapter seems like a bit of a leap.

The mask is stated to be from the nineteenth century and used by a secret society that functioned until 1920, acquired by an 88 year old man's grandfather likely during the late 19th century. It's the obscurity of the origin and the materials causing value here, not age. It was likely damn near new when he received it.

Why to do we have to place an imaginary story of an oppressive Indiana Jones in a pith hat burning the village and children for their prized good luck charm when a more likely story was he probably bought it at a street market as souvenir junk at the time? Also, Gabon is easily one of the richest countries in Africa due to an incredible wealth of rare resources, it is not a bad place to be and rather lovely. If they felt in the slightest that they wanted the item, they could easily add a legal team that was outstanding...they don't give a flying f.

This is one of those rewrites in history that we love to do in modern times. Perhaps we don't assume the great evils of everyone and instead think progress would have never happened if not for the actions of the past, both good and bad.

Having bought most of my good cards back in the 1980's, I'd be in serious trouble.

“Secret Society”?

Maybe not so secret. Collectors must have put a great deal of faith in the “ethnologist”, who authenticated this piece.

Anybody else getting Dead Sea Scroll, Morman Bible, Barry Halper collection vibes from this story?

As in, maybe the mask really only is worth a few hundred bucks…but the piece of historical fiction that the last niche auction house crafted around the piece, is what is actually worth millions.

I like where your head is at!

I promise I’m not trying to make this religious, but one small request - if you’re going to refer to us, make sure to spell our pejorative yet ubiquitous nickname correctly. Mormons.

Bonus endorsement from South Park: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jbNnsiP4Rhg

Apologies sir. "Mormon Bible".

...but since it WAS a hoax, maybe my typo (ie. horrible spelling) was more apt. :cool:



edited to add, for those not in the know, I'm referring to a fabricated document that was the subject of a Netflix documentary series recently......not the actual religious denomination.

Wasn't Gabon part of French West Africa?

Gary is a zombie and living in your basement.

What a bunch of horse-bleep.

Bingo.

If I absolutely knew that something was worth "x", I would offer a reasonable percentage of that -- even if the sticker price was pennies on the dollar.

However, if I was unsure about the value of something, and I merely suspected that it might be more valuable, then I'd be perfectly fine picking it up for pennies. In this case, the risk and expense for research was 100% on the antiques guy. He deserves the windfall.

I have no sympathy for the person who KNOWS the authenticity and provenance of an item and simply chooses to ignore it.

I read this article a few days ago and I am interested in how it plays out. One of the arguments made by the original sellers family was that thr Buyer advertised that he gave appraisals. Well we all know that an appraisal is just an opinion. If it was his opinion that he could resell it it for three or four hundred dollars. Then he paid a fair price for the item. He reached out to a couple other guys who agreed with his opinion/ Appraisal. Looks above board and fine.
Then he contacts an auction house that specializes in these types of items. And they say he " may have something" so carbon dating is done buyer asks sellers gardner if he has any knowledge of how it was obtained. So after all testing is complete it turns out it is worth 300 to 400k acording to auction house estimate. Then at sale it reaches 4.4 Million dollars. Then original seller cries foul!!
But I dont see any fraud.Buyer acted on his opinion of what it was worth. So it's not like Buyer found a Wagner and paid $157 for it more like he saw a an obscure type card that he saw similar cards sell for 3-4 hundred and paid about 50%. Then he contacts an AH who realizes that the card is an unknown variation tied to a very popular set ...like 33 Goudey and .....you get the picture.
So I cannot see the fraud. Ethics... I dont see any problem with buyers Ethics.

But we don't have a basement...

Don't take the name of Indiana Jones in vain. :D

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...aiders%201.png
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This has been a fascinating thread. My take is that if someone is selling something and asking a certain price the buyer is under no obligation to educate them on what they believe the actual value is.
It would be totally different if the buyer haggled with the seller or if a buyer tried to convince someone who had something of great value that is was not very valuable.

The Wagner in the old book at the bookstore is much more complex IMO. In that case, the seller has no idea the card is in there and that he is selling the card. Should he have been more diligent about being sure the books didn't contain anything? Perhaps. Yet also if shown the card at checkout who is to say if the dealer wouldn't recognize it for what it was?

Adding in that some Gabonese people did, in fact, protest the sale in 2022. They said, with reason, that it was a stolen cultural object.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/2022032...-protest-gabon

Suspicious that he went back and asked the sellers gardener. Why did he not ask the sellers themselves???

This sale is way different from a baseball card in one important respect, which is that at the time of the sale neither party necessarily knew what the object was (for certain) or its value.

The dealer obviously believed it was something valuable, but at the same time after buying it got two appraisals indicating it was worth about what he paid for it. This indicates there was uncertainty and risk involved - the thing might have turned out to not be worth much, but it also might be worth a lot. He was taking a chance on it and discounted the amount he was willing to pay to account for that risk. Given the windfall he achieved I think the right thing to do would ge to share some of that with the original owners, but I’m not sure that the courts should enforce that unless therewas some deliberate deceit involved.

This isn’t the case with baseball cards. If a dealer offers someone 150 bucks for a 1952 Topps Mantle, there is no risk like that and the dealer is purely ripping someone off.

I think there is also a huge difference between a dealer finding something valuable with a cheap price tag on it at a garage sale and a dealer seeing something valuable that someone owns and offering them what they know to be a ridiculously low price for it, hoping to take advantage of the other’s ignorance. In the former, its the seller’s fault and I don’t think they can complain. In the latter though I think they should have a claim.

How I see this...

If the buyer honestly didn't know the value of the mask or had a clue that it could be worth extremely more, then they did nothing wrong. However, if it were me, I'd gladly put some money back into the pockets of the original person that sold it to me. There'd be no obligation, but in my mind, it's karma.

If the buyer did know/understand that it could be worth much more, then ethically could have considered this in the transaction. If they didn't and just wanted to make a killing, then they're probably no different than a dealer of any other collectible who is an a-hole shyster.

Now apply this to the flea market - people go in search of such items at a flea market. What happens if the item is a fake, then the person that bought it thinking it was worth A LOT MORE (but probably didn't disclose that to the seller) got ripped off whilst thinking they were going to make a killing on it - that's just karma... what goes around comes around... :rolleyes:

The Golden Rule
 

I like this story, thanks for sharing it. And I agree. When in doubt, consider the Golden Rule. When confident (perhaps especially when confident), also consider the Golden Rule.

Your comment made me think of the "Americana / Folk Art" stuff that occasionally pops up on Antique Roadshow for ridiculous prices. If I was at a garage sale, and I saw an item that fits into the Americana category, I might be willing to take a risk that it could be worth me. And I don't know anything about Americana!

If I'm the seller in this article, and I'm paying for appraisals, and then carbon dating, I'm not sure how willing I would be to split money with the seller. He forked over some real cash for carbon dating. That ain't cheap.

But I agree with others. At some point, the ROI becomes too much, and throwing a bone back to the original seller is the right thing to do. I thought $300k was certainly a nice finder's fee.

The problem is that offering a substantial amount like that often does nothing more than encourage more piggish behavior. Unless there is a strategic reason to make the offer, like a statutory mechanism that punishes a plaintiff for not accepting a reasonable offer, even an offer made in good faith like that is often interpreted by plaintiffs to be show of doubt. There is also a very fine line you have to walk in a case so as not to encourage the plaintiff's counsel. Once lawyers smells blood, they expect a feast.

In this situation, where the outcome is likely to be a total victory on one side or the other, not a court splitting the baby, the idea of compromise is more elusive.

I have a lot of friends and family tell me that they like talking to me about sensitive topics because I rarely get upset when someone thinks differently than I do. I completely 100% agree that life is rarely black/white like many many people want it to be. Trying to look at life as gray, and deciphering gray scale is what makes it interesting. Almost all of my friends are Republican. Nearly all of my family are Democrats. I find talking to each of them is very rewarding.

I thought about this. If the item was bought by a private collector, I'm not sure the item will be repatriated. But if a museum bought it, there is a good chance that the provenance behind it would eventually force it to be returned to Gabon. The current ethics of museums is to return items stolen during colonialism. I don't necessarily agree to that every time. Some of the places getting items back are dangerous locations that have seen their museums pillaged within the last decade. To me, it's like returning an abused child to abusive parents. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. But the blanket sweep of "return all colonized stolen items" IMO seems to be mistaken.

Yet another gray area, Tim. There is certainly less freedom of choice on the colonial end, but there is still room for agency. If a local gave the mask as a gift to an outgoing English bureaucrat, that is a lot different than someone busting into a local museum and taking it. Or, to put it into a context much closer to home, a Native American artifact could have been stolen from a site, taken as a prize in war, traded for in peace, or found on the roadside. The closer you get to looted, as in the case of all of the forced art sales that the Nazis did, the less legitimate title is (even that required a new law to give the families of the victims a remedy).

Your article states no Gabonese people protested. It states a local French resident who claimed Gabonese descent protested with a half dozen friends. They also protested every item in the sale, not seeing anything of note in their argument that would back up Gabon was concerned.

You're not wrong. But it makes me think of Native American Reservations. They just kept getting smaller and smaller. Every generation or so, the Feds were moving the goal posts on what Native American support should entail. Some of the land was lost out of legal land sales to white farmers. But the reservation leaders were selling because they needed money. Capitalism and Native Culture often didn't co-exist well...until they discovered Casinos. Anyway, even legal sales or gifts can often be interpreted as theft when the group in power have put those without power between a rock and a hard place.

I took a Native American class last year, and they were teaching us about a wampum belt. It had been given to the white government at the time, and eventually made its way to a museum. After a court battle that it was not meant to be on display, it was repatriated to the local tribe. It has rarely been seen again. I think this happened in the late 1970s. This example is an extreme example of gray. It was the intersection of legality, ethics, and culture.

Compared to the end result, caron dating isn't all that expensive.

https://www.directams.com/price-list

Cultural artifact - under 500 if waiting is ok, and under 600 if you're in a rush.

Just one of the first I found on a google search. I'd expect some higher and some lower.

That's interesting. But I wonder if the carbon dating was messed up by collecting dust from other sources due to being displayed etc. Plus, doesn't carbon dating an item give you a range of dates +/- fifty years. You would think for an item this "young" that carbon dating would not be helpful and could be called into question.

I think the mask was old enough, but I'm not sure. The technology has changed for the better apparently.

I just learned of a different way of describing dates. BP, which is "before present" referring to dates before January 1, 1950. Somewhat randomly chosen, but tied to both the beginning of carbon dating, and the proliferation of nuclear testing which altered the radioactive carbon available enough that it has to be accounted for.