Just let me know if you think the thread is ruined and I'll start a second one with a poll.:eek:

This thread has gotten legs on other social media sites.

I do hope we get more of a statement from the people referenced.

I feel bad for OP, but it seems like his collection was large and unorganized, and very esoteric. I can see what was 'cherry-picking' to him being Leland's/Clean Sweep deciding much of it wasn't saleable. As for the contract, I hope there is more to it than what is being shown, because the picture in the first post looks like it was written on the back of a napkin, and the Net54 Bar Association can't even agree on what very basic tenents of it mean.

Thank you Peter for the laugh. I was actually going to suggest that but didn't want to post more off topic crap. I am sure at this point there will be no more productive posts unless the OP comes back with more details. Have a great day!:)

Thanks for posting this additional information about the collection.

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As a working class collector that sacrifices a lot to stay in the game (by choice), that has not been my experience. Some of the nicest most helpful members have been from the high net worth group you deride.

Are there jerks here, indeed, but far fewer than in the general population.

OK. So if your friend's collection is worth well into six figures, say $300,000, would you say $120,000 is a fair price for the work you did? I'm just asking.

And obviously, none of us really know all the facts here, we are all just making up theories as we go along.

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You know, the poster wasn't even a member on this board. It was his first post. Most of us are very sympathetic to anyone's complaints on here, whether it's about evil Ebay, corrupt FedEx or big uncaring auction houses.

Usually you get some insight behind the posts. If it's James, he's just letting off steam, if it's Yoda, he probably forgot his meds. But this is some random newbie poster looking to flame some well known AHs.

I don't see where he has any rights to broadcast on our forum. The thread is entertaining to me, but I am surprised that Leon allowed it in the first place.

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Some obvious stupid negligence to gripe about is one thing, but not sure this is the best forum to trot out one side of a full blown breach of contract dispute.

It's not an exact comparison because my friend inherited his collection and knows nothing about it or has ever been interested in sports cards and memorabilia. Without some kind of help from someone who knew about the hobby, he would have probably had a tough time finding someone to buy it (or an auction house to be willing to go through it all) at anywhere close to the value it turned out to be worth since the vast majority of items were low value. However, mixed in amongst everthing was a lot of value, so yes, I think the work I did for him was worth at least 40% to him. Below is a picture of what I was dealing with which only shows about 2/3 of what he had. This is a 10x15 storage unit it's in, and the rest was in another office he was renting.

For the OP, without knowing more details about how the collection was organized, the desirability of the items and their general value, it's hard to say what would be a fair cut for an auction house. Regardless of the value of an item, there's still some time required to list it in an auction. If something is going to sell for $5000, it doesn't take 1000x longer to list it than an item that will sell for $5. Based on a post by someone who knew the OP, it sounds like there were some better items but a large amount of items that would take a lot of time and effort to go through and organize before listing even though they were not high value, and if they're only going to sell for a small amount, the auction house needs to make more on the better items to make it worth their time and effort. I still don't think enough is known about the overall situation to be able to judge how fair it is to the OP.

Interesting
 

I wonder if the person who coached or told the OP to post this will show his face?

I have known Steve Verkman for over 35 years. I have 1000s of deals with him. I have never had any issues. He’s always been honest and up front in regard to terms.

If I had two truck loads of mediocre stuff and a few decent items I would be happy with a 15k advance and allow someone else to hustle all the lower end stuff for me at the agreed upon percentage. We all think our stuff is worth more than it is. I suspect the OP might be happy at the end once he gets a final check and sees all the work that was done.?

We don’t have very many details and it seems like several members are quick to judge with minimal info.

I think Leon handled this very well too.

I wish the OP well with any medical issue he is having and hope this works itself out and everyone is happy in the end.

Is this really a breach of contract dispute? More like a dispute about the fairness of the contract, but I don't think there's been any claim that the terms of the contract have been breached.

A signed document is a deal ??
 

Was this 1805 signed document to trade a couple horses for some land a legal deal/document--a few years ago my father bought some land in Texas, Paid the man, signed all the legal documents etc. After the fact the seller thought he could have got more--and took my father to court to break-up the agreement. -- a deals a deal isn't it?

That looks a lot like my collection. Are you going to be in Chicago anytime soon?

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I haven't had any personal interaction with the parties involved, but it sure seems like OP ended up with a very bad deal. I can't imagine getting only 60% of the proceeds of my collection from an AH.

For the right price, maybe I could be. :)

Jay---that would have been a great unit for a Storage Wars episode

Think this is my very first time over in the "water cooler" section. Didn't really know it existed until now. lol. Might have to wander over here more often.

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!

The first few days I spent going through stuff was basically to determine if it was worth the time and effort or if we should just try to find someone to buy it as is. I found enough to decide to go through it all, and it was the right decision.

Rusty Staub was a very good player and has a following.

However, other than game used items and the few rare cards you mentioned, his value is very limited, especially in volume.

His regular Topps cards other than his rookie have little value.

His autograph is cheap on virtually anything as he signed a ton over his post playing career.

If the collection is truly 90% Staub related, it will be very difficult to sell at any high level, again other than key items.

It takes a LOT of very good Rusty Staub items to get to 6 figures and my guess is he sold most of his game used items himself or consigned them to an auction house.

I found out a couple more facts about this as Joe is a friend of a friend. Joe has not cashed any advance checks, but already got a bill saying he owed 16% interest on the advance until it is paid off. Joe's favorite player was Rusty Staub but his collection is much wider than that. All Joe wants is to get his items back. No checks have been cashed and if Lelands has any real costs he is willing to make them whole. But as of today Lelands has refused. I only met Josh a few times over a few decades but I cannot see him agreeing a customer should be treated like this.

Its a fun place! I think I spend more time in this section than the main one :D

No one can ignore you, James.[emoji3]

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As time went on, he collected some Yaz, Seaver and Tony Perez stuff too, players he also liked. He could have had some great/rare items of these players as well, but from what I last knew it was probably 90% Rusty Staub items. He used to go to Rusty's restaurant in NYC a lot and get his items signed.

P.S. Jonathan, I remember seeing you and your father Joe set up at the old Paul Gallagher NYC shows in the 70s to 80s.

looks to me that by the time everything is auctioned off hes gonna owe them money

Is it standard practice to charge interest on an advance from an auction house?

I hadn't realized it when I started out, but I have heard of it being done by a number of auctions, though I certainly don't know if it's a universal practice. We aren't funded like the big boys so we don't do a ton of advances but we haven't charged interest in those cases where we've done them.

It would seem to incentivize NOT bringing the collection to auction in a timely fashion, especially if a time frame isn't outlined in the contract.

How can you payoff an advance you never took?

Something is weird in this story!

Literally, many thousands of customers/consignors have been satisfied with the service over the last 35 years from Lelands and Clean Sweep so I guess they will make up their own minds about the validity of this claim.

Advances are popular for big ticket items as they may help bring in the consignment with all other things being equal.

I have gotten them in the past from multiple auction houses and have never paid any interest.

The advance is simply deducted from the consignor's final earnings at auction end.

Obviously, if the proceeds do not cover the advance, the uncovered advance must be returned to the auction house which rarely happens.

Is 16% a reasonable rate of interest for an advance? I could probably go to the bank and get a personal loan with a lower rate.

.

Whether he cashed the check or not, he did get the advance as far as the auction house is concerned.

I thought the same thing about possibly slowing down the items being auctioned if there's interest being charged. Also, there's nothing in the contract that was posted to indicate interest on the advance. In fact, it says no additional fees so interest really doesn't make sense.

That's why I was hoping there was more to the contract than what has been posted, because what has been posted so far is a real mess.

I assumed he returned the check to them. Maybe not.

The auctioneers knew exactly what they were doing. Under NY law 16% is the most you can charge w/o committing civil usury. Maybe legal but not a good look, guys.

Yikes. Yeah, that's not a good look at all.

Especially on a sum that in context to the AH is negligible.

Agreed.

Say you have an item with a fmv of $1000 and you consign it to an ah with a 20% bp and a 20% consignor fee. If a buyer is willing to pay fmv, that would but his high bid at $833 and change. Then 80% of that would be the consignor’s cut…in this case $666, or 67%. So 60% of the hammer, plus a cut of the bp, plus help with grading fees seem about right to me…but what do I know.

Nobody charges seller's fees any more, do they? At least not in the sports auction biz.

Well that’s the best thing I’ve heard in a while!

Considering the OP posted a screenshot from the Clean Sweep website saying the following - "We charge a 10% commission on all items that sell for $500 or more and 15% for lots that sell for under $500." - I'm not sure that's an accurate statement. Maybe on items of high enough value it's true, but probably not in general for everything.

Nobody consigns anymore, its too busy

The AH needs to undo this or join the discussion. Seems there is some confusion regarding details and, as previously stated, it isn't a good look at all.

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Last year, I reached out to Huggins & Scott to inquire about consigning these cards:

1928 Tharp's Ice Cream Babe Ruth #6 (Throwing) SGC 1
1928 Tharp's Ice Cream Lou Gehrig #26 SGC 35 (2.5)
1933 George C. Miller Jimmie Foxx SGC 1.5

I was told that their standard commission is 20% from the seller (on top of the 20% buyer's premium they receive), but they would reduce my fees to 5% only if I gave them all three cards to sell.

Someone from SCP Auctions reached out to me unsolicited on this site and tried to get me to consign through him with a 10% consignor fee (down from his standard 15%), leaving me with only 90% of the hammer price:

So, yes, there are auction houses charging seller fees if they can get away with it, even for marketable cards that are already graded/authenticated.

I can’t believe more people aren’t focused on how poor the document is.

You can’t tell me that the pictured contract is acceptable. Now there’s interest on the advance? Is that written on another piece of paper we don’t see?

Auction company and representatives can have all the history and positive experiences in the world but that contract is amateur at best and intentionally poor at worst.

Can I get the cliff notes of this thread in 5 bullets or less?

Someone in the hobby is trying to make money off another person in the hobby.:D

LOL. What he deserved for that request.

Thanks for posting some actual information about what AHs charge for commissions. Clearly it's negotiable so contacting multiple AHs makes sense. So many people like to say that sellers shouldn't pay anything to an AH, but that doesn't look to be accurate unless you have a very high priced or highly desirable item.

If someone has to pay a seller's premium on top of having their take reduced by the buyer's premium, makes even less sense in many cases to consign to an auction house, IMO.

Sure, there are other avenues a seller has, but they all have pros and cons. Not everyone wants to deal with trying to sell things themselves. Even if they do, finding the way to get the most exposure to the right people can be challenging. Posting on net54 is free but what percentage of the card collecting community does it actually reach?

IMO for any non-elite cards there are better ebay options which is what I do. Exposure not an issue obviously.

Ebay obviously works for a lot of people, but there are also plenty of complaints posted here about it. Like I said, there are pros and cons to every method of selling. It comes down to what an individual seller is most comfortable with.

Anyone who thinks auction houses can survive on a 20% BP with no seller fees is naive. Maybe a very small operation with low OH could but I doubt it.

Of course, if you consign a single $100K item, they will give you no fee and possibly half of the BP because they do virtually nothing for $10K on their end.

It all depends on the amount of work and expense they incur that establishes any seller fees.

In this case, based on minimal known facts, it appears a lot of time and money would be spent to bring the collection to auction. Is 40% unreasonable. Not in my opinion and yes, I realize it is in the minority on this forum.

The consignor certainly had the right to refuse the offered terms and negotiate with other auction houses but did not choose that route before signing the dotted line on this contract and now thinks he was mistreated.

We can always come up with excuses for making bad decisions but most of us have to live with them. It is called a life lesson.

Can we get the proof of this claim? The contract he produced has no mention of 16% interest rates on the advance. A follow-up contractual agreement, a copy of the bill, or similar documentation is needed. Did he of his own free will, though regretted now, sign an agreement to take a $15K advance at 16% interest, or is he receiving bills for an absurd interest rate he never signed anything agreeing to? Either way, this should be quick and easy to prove if true.

One thing that may be informing people's opinions that the fee was unfair is this claim by the OP:

I have already been contacted by another auction house telling me if I am successful getting the collection returned they would take it on consignment and give me 100% of the hammer + a percentage of the buyers premium.

I would say it's HARDER for a smaller auction house as we're not taking in 6 and seven figure items that give us leeway on commission on the smaller items.

Agreed (well I take minor exception to "do virtually nothing" but I agree with the overall point)

Right. 1000 lots with a value of $100,000 can EASILY take 100 man hours to sell. One $100,000 lot takes an hour, tops.

If true, maybe he should have contacted a lawyer instead of posting on a baseball card forum.

It's hard to assess whether it's credible, seems unlikely given the nature of the collection and the amount of work that would be involved, but who knows.

He can do both.

True, but his first post had this in it so apparently he hadn't at that point which was 2 months after he signed the contract:

1) If you are an attorney and believe you can be of any help please reach out to me

Maybe he did before and was told he had no claim, or the lawyers were not interested in the case.

Just using this as an example…thats $400/hr for that work that AH would do…Using the terms in this deal.

And then the BP.

Without that how would you expect them to live the lifestyle they do? You don't live like that on $20 an hour.:confused:

Obviously your math is right. My emphasis on EASILY was meant to communicate that it would likely be more hours. Using our auctions as a yardstick we average about 1200 lots per auction and right around $100,000 per auction. We're more likely in the 200+ man hours neighborhood per auction between sorting, lotting, writing, photographing and packing/shipping. That DOESN'T take into account pick up time and expenses, marketing efforts from reaching out to media outlets, doing social media promotion and graphic design for print ads etc. which are all still directly related to that particular auction so it could easily be sneaking up on 300 hours. That's as opposed to just general expenses like advertising rates, rent, utilities, software fees (do people realize that most auctions pay a percentage of the take to the software company they deal with?) etc...

When I do a formal appraisal (for insurance, or legal purposes such as estate situations of divorce) I charge $150/hour and that work is much easier than auction prep.

If it really was two truck loads it was likely a LOT more than 1000 lots, and we don't really have a firm idea on value, but if it's 5000 lots worth $200,000 it changes the math pretty quickly.

The point I'm trying to make is, it's a lot more work than people realize. It's work that also can't be done by just anyone. Believe me we've tried to hire cataloguers and tried to train existing staff, it's a colossal pain. The amount of expense in running an auction is MUCH greater than people seem to believe. People think "Wow, no inventory costs, the business is pure profit." It's just not the case.

We don't have enough good information to determine if this was a fair deal or not, but I have to say (as I've already said) it doesn't sound crazy to me.

$400 an hour for a company is not $400 an hour to one person.

Disgusting precedent to set.

Poor form for an auction house to reach out IMO.
Not knowing what the collection is
Details are sketchy at best
Advance was given in good faith...even if not cashed

Everyone, including me, is speculating with a ridiculous lack of facts.

Having said that, based on the consignor's claim of receiving a surprise bill for 16% interest, I wonder if your last comment about the advance being given in good faith passes the smell test.

Again, all speculation with the facts so murky.

Good point on the 16% vig. Clean Sweep and Steve Verkman have a pretty good rep in the business. But business, is just that

Also stated that the cost of authentication will be shared with the consignor… important to note is that not everything was taken and the collection was cherry picked… seems like a pretty hefty consignment fee to pay for only the good stuff.

Took me a couple of days to realize this thread was moved.

I guess I should thank Leon for keeping my very 1st post on the main page, in spite of it being a public shaming of an AH that also happens to be an advertiser on the forum. It's been a few years, but thanks Leon. (In case it's not clear, I promise this isn't sarcasm.)

Of course, in that situation, I provided more details and pics at the request of the other posters here, and there were plenty of people who still jumped to support the AH, in spite of the fact that the AH auctioned off a fistful of clear and painfully obvious fakes. So much so that some of the backs of the items were clearly identified as Kodak photo paper. Luckily for the AH, when they listed photos of the items in the auction, they happened to leave off the backs that were on Kodak photo paper. I suspect this means that James and I are mostly in agreement about the strong affinity for AHs among a subset of the posters here, although since almost all of my collection is in slabs, this is probably an uncomfortable position for James.

And while it might sound like I take a dim view of AHs in general, being in the professional services industry, I'm actually pretty supportive of the role that AHs play and the amount of work that it must take, particularly on high volume, relatively low-value per item, disorganized consignments.

On the other hand, I can empathize with the OP in wanting to share his experience, and by so doing hope that the collecting community can learn from it. The fact that it was his first post is probably as much a function of finally having a big enough motive to get into the game.

In terms of whether this was a bad deal for the consignor, I'll agree that it's really hard to tell without knowing more about the details. But it's certainly possible that it could be a fair deal. Or it could be highway robbery. Clear as mud, sadly.

+1

Also, as stated above, no chance any legitimate auction house would make that commitment not having any idea of the volume or value of the collection sight unseen.

Maybe cherry picked because it would not all fit on the two trucks and auctioning the better valued items first would be a great help to the consignor who was looking for cash. Sure, the auction house benefits as well but since a $15K advance was given in good faith, they would certainly want to recoup that as quickly as possible. Any business would want to do that.

Obviously, just a guess but the consignor did not state that they were not eventually taking all they committed to, just that they cherry picked on the initial load.

It's still pretty unclear exactly what was taken. The OP said not everything was taken and the collection was cherry picked, but he never really said how much was taken or how much of the 2 trucks that showed up were filled. There's a lot of unknowns still, and the OP hasn't bothered to come back and answer any of the questions or provide any more information about exactly what was taken.

I could not possibly agree more with what you say here, absolutely spot-on. And while you do have a collection of great cards in slabs, the way you have it so tastefully displayed is simply awesome!