Right off the bat, we’re going to start with an admission that we screwed up. Several of the accusations levied against Heritage are far off base, but we’ll acknowledge that we did make a mistake (or perhaps more than one) in regard to the initial poster’s situation. The lot had been listed in our previous Signature auction and when it did not sell, it was moved to our May auction. In the interim the consignor requested the return of the item and somehow we did not remove it from our books. The jersey was long gone by the time the May auction even began, but since the copy had been written and the photos taken, we didn’t realize it until the sale was complete. The later customer service issues were due to the fact that that department misinterpreted the data in our system—this is a 400+ employee company, and there was a breakdown in communication. I would suggest that should any situation like this arise again, the client would be best served by contacting the Sports department directly. Understand that we accept full fault on this and we make no excuses, only an explanation. I would hope that common sense would dictate that any belief that Heritage would risk its reputation, and the $800+ million in annual sales derived from it, on shady dealings over a piece worth hundreds of dollars, is in error.
And so we do apologize for our initial mistake, and for the imperfect handling of the resolution. But if our simple pledge of honest dealings isn’t enough, we would hope that a logical consideration of the risk/reward dynamic would be enough to convince even the most cynical among us.
We’d apply that statement to this troubling and utterly false suggestion of shill bidding as well. It simply does not happen at Heritage. It’s an unfortunate fact that a small percentage of bids are not honored. We do make every attempt to settle all accounts, but in the end it is simply impossible to extract payment from someone who is unwilling (or, in many cases, unable) to honor his bids. Heritage has, by far, the largest collectibles bidding clientele outside of eBay, and unfortunately there will be a few bad eggs in a carton that size. The upside is World Record prices—the bidder who paid $418,000 for the Bill Buckner ball, for example, had never bid in a collectibles auction before, but we were all over the news and he signed up the day before the auction. The downside with such a volume of clients is that a very small percentage of invoices in a 2,700 lot auction are inevitably not paid.
It should go without saying that all reneging bidders are banned. It likely doesn’t go without saying—so we’ll say it—that our consignment agreements clearly state that unsold properties can be transferred to the next available auction at our discretion. So, for example, Heritage was completely within its legal rights to retain Mr. Borkin’s unsold ring for placement in our August auction, but we instead returned it and forfeited several thousand dollars in commissions accordingly. This should stick a pin in any belief that shilling, or any other form of auction treachery, was at play.
And, speaking of banned clients, we’ll close with a clarification. Richard Simon and Travis Roste claim that their accounts were suspended by Heritage for negative comments posted on the board. While we’d admit there is an uncomfortable irony in simultaneously bashing and patronizing a business, that’s not the reason. Simon’s account, as well as several others’, was suspended for allegedly working in conjunction with a man known to the law enforcement world (and on this board and
http://whitebetsy.wordpress.com/) as “The Cooperstown Forger.” Roste’s account was suspended after a campaign of harrassment of our executives in May of 2011.
To paraphrase the great Vince Lombardi, we won’t ever be perfect, but in the pursuit of perfection we’ll achieve greatness. We are human and mistakes will inevitably be made, but it’s important to bear in mind that boards such as these paint a very distorted picture. On any topic at all, as we all know, you’re far more likely to hear complaints than praise. Our most recent Signature Sports auction included over 400 consignors—ask around, and you’ll quickly learn that’s many multiples the hobby average. There’s a reason for this, and it’s the quality of our overall service. Heritage Sports sells close to 15,000 lots annually—that’s a huge volume of transactions, many multiples that of some of our top competitors. Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times; Mariano Rivera has struck out once in his career. Who’s the better hitter?