Today there will be no good, just the bad. 
Southern Counties Auctioneers T/A Netherhampton Salerooms
Weekly auction of Old and Modern Furniture, Collectables and Effects, Antique Auctions first Friday of each month, specialist Antique and Decorative items auctions bi-monthly, full or part house clearance, valuations for sale, probate and insurance.
Finding a good auction house is like finding a good restorer, only much more difficult. Especially since it is a trade that plays both ends against the middle and is rife with incompetence.
An auctioneers statement of condition or authenticity is not fact but merely opinion. An opinion that is often informed by nothing more than limited experience. And that opinion cannot be held accountable.
Caveat emptor.
Of all the many auction houses that I have ever dealt with, the Netherhampton Salerooms must be the absolute worst. And I would not be at all surprised to learn that half of the bids may have come off of the back wall.
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Wednesday, 17 March 2010
The good, the bad and the ugly
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10 comments:
I have been screwed over terribly by an auction house...it was a horrible learning experience.
Is there such a thing as Liveauctioneers, (an online auction service) available in UK?
Very interesting, HBOC, to have my suspicions/prejudices confirmed. I've never trusted auction houses since I attended one in Europe years ago. I'll bet they're happy to have you advertise for them!
C - there is. Most of the out of the way places have internet bidding now.
Blue - I now view them as the used car salesmen of the art world.
HOBAC - I mean is there a general site for a collection of auction houses, or do they all operate separately?
Very unfortuante as those far out have been thrilled to have all this at our fingertips but, noted with thanks, should it ever have been a question.
The Aucion houses get money from the seller and the buyer and sometimes have shills in there to steal it for themslves, It happened to me with a world war 2 Capi DeMonte tea set in florida,
Here auctioneer came to the house and said I could easly get $2000
for a hand made Captians desk 1880 Carved in China. He sent me a
$200 CHECK BUYER BE WARE
C - not that I have found, they seem to operate separately.
I understand that it is really difficult to find good expertise at small local auctionhouses, one of the reasons is that for small local or regional auctionhouses, they need to sell a lot of lotnumbers to make a little profit, there are in a lot of cases no properly trained experts available for specific collecting fields which can be interesting from the experienced and educated buyers view, you could land yourself a beautiful work of art for a bargain. Since local and regional auctionhouses have to sell large volumes of objects to make a profit the cataloguing process is very minimal and the condition report if it even is available is also minimal. I would allways advise to go look at viewing days and see the object with your own eyes, and do your own research as well. From a sellers view it is allways better to bring your work of art to a bigger auctionhouse, since there is much more expertise available en specific experts to review and estimate your work of art. At the same time at the bigger auctionhouses you can agree to an threshold, a price under which your work of art won't be sold and maintains yours.
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