OT: AH Does It All Wrong

[Wheatland Auctions]

Hi Everyone – I have debated about responding to this thread, but decided that I at least wanted to express our feelings and thoughts behind our shipping policy. As an auctioneer and the owner of Wheatland, and with a husband who owns a sports card shop in our hometown in addition to his full time job, we have been involved in this industry as buyers and sellers for many years. When we decided to focus my auction company on the Sports Card & Memorabilia business, it was because of a strong love and lifelong enthusiasm for the hobby as both a collector & seller. We have been excited to be a part of this business, love working with and helping collectors, and treat everyone as we would like to be treated. At the start of our business, we did shipping in-house. We were doing live simulcast auctions at that time, so many lots sold to our live bidders and some went online. When we made the switch to all online bidding, we could no longer keep up with the shipping while still preparing for the next auction. With limited space in our current offices and storage spaces and a small staff, we needed to enlist the help of a professional shipping company. Postal Connections is owned & run by a local family who purchased into that franchise – they are an honest and trustworthy company, which was important to us as they would be handling rare and valuable merchandise. They operate a store front, and as such cannot give away packaging supplies that their employees use when preparing shipments, which they do according to FedEx/UPS safety guidelines. Our goal is to ultimately be able to bring shipping in-house again, but in the meantime, they have been an invaluable part of our team, and they are invested in getting all auction shipments out safely in a reasonable and timely manner.

When any issue arises, I personally work with each buyer to come to a resolution. I am always happy to call or visit Postal Connections on behalf of any buyer, and work to negotiate a fair outcome for all. The overall feedback that we have received about Postal Connections is overwhelmingly positive – I most often hear that the quality of their packing is excellent, and damaged items are extremely rare.

Because of our growth over the past few years, we are excited for some new changes coming our way. We have recently begun working with Simple Auction Site to reconfigure our website and to begin to implement their bidding platform, which will be familiar to many auction bidders. Additionally, we are making plans to bring shipping back in-house. While this may not be implemented by our next auction, we hope to have it in place in 2016. Thank you to all who bid & consign with us – we will continue to work hard to bring high quality, exciting sports memorabilia to auction for you!