Even dealers get burned… Item Number: 100047 $0.00

DescriptionA funny thing happened to us on the way to “the Forum” this week. By “forum” I am referring to the Ancient Artifacts forum on Yahoo. Usually, this is a very good venue to discuss sellers who are good (us, of course) and sellers who are bad (can we say Sadigh?), as well as get opinions on pieces that we may be unfamiliar with. But this week, we found ourselves a bit on the defensive – a position we are not accustomed to finding ourselves in. Let me elaborate…

As you may know, like many dealers and collectors, we occasionally find bargains on eBay that we take advantage of (OK, we jump on these bargains with both feet when we can). Two weeks ago we actually found a very fine AUTHENTIC Late Dynastic Egyptian bronze cat that we did very well with, but I digress. About the same time, we also saw a gentleman in France selling a small collection of ancient artifacts. As we have done many times, we contacted the seller, asked if he would be interested in selling the entire collection to us directly, and established a price that would allow us to buy these at a price we were satisfied would allow us to make a small margin. Simple, right?

Life is never quite that simple! Late last week a very large box arrived from France and we opened it. Of the 15 or so pieces inside, 5 were not ancient/fakes (but very good fakes that one really couldn’t discern from photographs) and the money piece – a very large Etruscan Bucchero Oinochoe - was in about 20 pieces (there simply was not enough protective packaging to allow this parcel to be tossed about by the postal gorillas and survive). Maybe not the seller’s fault, but certainly not ours either…

Being prudent business people, we contacted the seller with our findings, wishing to work out a fair settlement based on the goods received vs. the goods we were offered via pictures/descriptions. There were items in the shipment we could use, but naturally, we didn’t really want the fakes, nor did we want to pay for the fakes or for the broken piece. After about 24 hours of silence, we decided perhaps we might want to protect ourselves by establishing a claim with PayPal (that’s why we use PayPal in the first place – to try to protect purchases from folks who may not be on the up & up, or when items received do not match what was ordered/expected).

The funny part happens next. We woke up the next day to find that the seller had lambasted us profusely on the Ancient Artifacts group. He was claiming we were trying to cheat him out of his money, that we didn’t know real from fake and that we were making claims on pieces he didn’t even include in the parcel. Huh? Here we thought we were the wronged party, and yet the seller ends up trying to smear our good name via a very public forum. Teresa and I fought the urge to respond to his post on the Ancient Artifacts group, mostly because it isn’t the right venue to be discussing issues like this, because we weren’t all that mad, we just wanted to work out a settlement that was fair to each party. Fortunately for us, over a dozen group members responded to his post in support of Artemis and the fair way we conduct business. Contrary to what the seller was hoping for, I think the tactic actually backfired r as he didn’t get a single published response in support of his position.

I guess if there are lessons to be learned by this misunderstanding, here they might be:

1. Protect yourself on every transaction you make – regardless of the source
2. If you have an issue with a seller (or buyer) don’t air this dirty laundry for the public to see. You might not like their reaction to your dirty drawers!

Happy and safe collecting!
Bob