Originally Posted by Al C.risafulli
I'll jump in here (I've sent stuff back to Leon, actually).
There are a couple of reasons why we send stuff back, and these are probably typical of most auction houses. It's usually not a case of "meh, I don't feel like selling this."
• We didn't know it was coming and it doesn't fit our auction for some reason. We like to sell things, we don't like to return things, nobody makes any money when we send it back to the consignor but if it's not right for the auction, it's not right for the auction. I know this can feel almost insulting, but it shouldn't. It helps all the other items you consign if they aren't surrounded by things that don't fit.
• When we receive a thing, it's in much worse condition than we expected. This happens a lot. I just returned a World Series program - the consignor sent a scan that looked very nice, but when we received it, about half the pages had been torn out.
• I can tell the consignor has expectations that aren't realistic for the piece. I recently returned a piece once I realized the consignor thought it was much more valuable than it is - I don't want to sell something when I know the consignor is going to be disappointed.
• It's rejected as inauthentic, or we can't get it into a holder. I'm about to return an item to someone who was pretty proud of it, but unfortunately it's a modern re-strike of a vintage photo and has very little value. I can't sell that.
• To us, it just doesn't make sense to have multiple examples of a thing in the same auction. We'll do it on items that are very common, or when the items are dramatically different in grade, but if I think something that comes in is going to split the bidders on something else that's in the auction, I don't think it helps the consignor to sell a thing just because we have it. In this kind of case, we usually ask the consignor if we can run it in the next auction, and if the consignor isn't comfortable with that, we return it. It's important to note that in cases like this, sometimes we don't realize we have multiples of something until we get them both entered into our system - with 1,000 lots (give or take), it's hard to remember everything we have.
I'd say # 1 and 2 above are the most common, and I would hope that wouldn't impact someone's decision about whether to consign with us again. I like to think that at least some of the reason people like LOTG is because of the kinds of material we offer, so I try to make sure we're on brand as much as possible.
-Al
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