Thank you for posting.
In a small community, people don't like to "bad mouth" others publicly, so your stepping forward and posting something less than glowing about another dealer is refreshing. Of course, I am taking what you've written with an open mind and taking for granted you are not doing a shill review. Regardless of the fact my one consignment with Bruce was positive, I am glad to know of your experience.It takes courage to sit down and write an account of what happened to you. ________________________________ From: Richard Halegua Comic Art <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, June 11, 2012 11:46 PM Subject: [MOPO] My Consignment to Bruce.. and what I didn't like about it Okay Folks.. here goes. Before I put this down, I want everyone here to know some simple things, including Bruce. Bruce is my friend and has been for a very long time. I first met Bruce at the 1968 Comic Art con in NYC when I was just 11 years old. We never really hung out much then for obvious reasons (I was 11.. hello), but over the years we definitely got to know each other and about 1985 when I floated back to movie posters and we met again at Cinevent, we became much more friendly. I have alot of respect for Bruce and like many people who are my friends, I consider them to be my brothers and my sisters. Chances are, if I couldn't think of you as someone that close to me, I probably couldn't consider you my friend. Bruce is definitely a brother The story that follows is my personal experience, or I should say, one of my experiences as a consignor, because I have a few times consigned to Bruce. It is not anyone else's story as I refuse to tell other people's experiences behind any anonymity and if I do know anyone with a negative story, they just have to tell it themselves. I just pass around gossip like "I know lots of people who have bad experiences with Heritage". Sorry.. That's not my bag. I'm not telling this story to infuriate Bruce. I'm telling it because I've had enough of these accusations back and forth that looks like one dealer trying to disparage other dealers. It's silliness, it's a negative to the hobby, and MoPo as well as APF is just too full of this bullshit and it has to stop. In kind, after I tell this story, if someone wants to tell of some negative experienc e you've had buying from me, selling to me or consigning etc.. Go for it. I'm a big boy and the truth does not hurt me my story........... Back near the end of 2008, I had determined that I wasn't doing well with stills in my auctions. It was too bad because I have lots of great great stills. So because I was spending lots of money with my friend Bruce, and because it was my opinion that he wasn't just doing well with good stuff, but that he was kicking ass, I decided to ask Bruce if he would take a consignment of stills. He agreed as long as I sent him good stuff. I promised it would be a great load of stuff, but I wanted them sold in a short period of time so that I could spend the money with him as in 2008 and into 2009, I really wasn't doing well enough, and though I can't muzzle my collecting habit, I could at least find a way to get it to pay for itself a little better at the time. So I carefully went through my stock and I pulled the best of the best. Silent portraits of Valentino, Nita Naldi, Nazimova, Harold Lloyd. Scene stills from Wings with Clara Bow, It Happened One Night, Petrified Forest. Great images of Jean Harlow, Gable, Clara Bow and even great stuff from High Noon, and the Wild Bunch. This was great incredible stuff and only the best images. There was absolutely no chaff in this stuff. 492 stills. I sent bruce a link to an online gallery of the stills so he could approve them before I shipped them also. I got my ducks lined up. So after I got them prepped and I photographed them all (yeah that's right, that's my inventory. I practice what I preach!), I had Anna box them up and they were shipped to Bruce on 4-17-2009. I was spending some money with Bruce in 2009, and fortunately things were also getting better, so I sort of forgot about them for a while until I realized Bruce hadn't auctioned them yet, so on 7-28 I emailed Bruce if he was going to get to them sometime soon. He responded on 8-23 with the following email: Rich I have good news and bad news! The bad news is that I got so backed up I did nothing with the stills. The good news is that I opened them, and I am going to sneak in around 40 of them in with my really great single owner collection we are selling 9/3-9/10. More good news is that I see that you weren't kidding and there are lots of really good ones, and I will get most of them ready for the next still auction at the end of September. More good news is that I have a good collection of autographed items for a special autograph only auction in late September or October which is mostly stills, and I will add yours to that. The only other bad news is that I likely will have trouble identifying some of the stills. I will do all I can (and look at your web page) and then I will likely send any back to you with Post-Its on them so you can add the titles and return them. But bottom line, you sent a shitload of great stills! Bruce So in other words, more than 4 months had gone by and he hadn't even opened up my box! I was not pleased because I really hadn't expected my consignment to be handled in this way and to make matters worse, he was only going to be auctioning less than 10% of my consignment the following month, which was not what I had in mind, and not what I recalled discussing with him prior to the consignment. However, Bruce is my friend, I understand sometimes work is tough, and Bruce did not hear one single complaint from me. Not one gripe. So he sold what he sold and I got a check for some $300 or $400. I didn't keep track of what I was paid, because it had become unimportant to me. I was letting Bruce deal with the stills. He did of course pay me for what he sold within his stated period of 30 or 45 days etc. Now I will admit that I didn't think he got a satisfactory price for my stuff.. But as a long time dealer, I completely understand this issue. I did not gripe one bit, and I continued letting Bruce sell my stills. Then in December 2009, he listed a few more stills.. Maybe a dozen. I don't recall exactly because.. well.. I trust Bruce. maybe I took the pics of mine for an inventory, but not once did I check my visual inventory against anything after the first time, largely because I don't have the time and I trust Bruce. I did however tell Bruce at the beginnig that if he had any trouble with identifications, he should contact me, and clearly from his email copied above, he said he would. well.. he didn't. On 12/29/2009 he sold this still from my consignment, for $7.00... http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/619346.html the only problem was, he failed to identify the woman in the still as Joan Crawford. Had Bruce done so, I suggest this still would have sold for at least a little more than $7.00 and possibly quite a bit more. sadly, I hadn't looked at his auction until maybe an hour before they ended (I am just too busy), which was just too damn late to do anything about. I shook my head, told Anna (she is my secretary), took a deep breath and I moved on. I never said one word to Bruce about this and this is the first time he will have heard anything about it. In other words.. I didn't gripe, I sucked it up, and I didn't bitch to anyone on any forum either. I don't have time to dwell on stupid shit like this.. I moved on and I continued to let Bruce sell the stills, although I don't recall if he did sell any more of them. He can probably tell better than I. Then in January 2010, I sold a great collection, on consignment, that a friend had bought and after he pulled out some great stuff, he let me sell 98% of the collection. There was great stuff. Lone Ranger 1sh, Bullit, Le Mans, Bond stuff, Rio Bravo.. here's a list of the results of that auction, or the first part of it at least http://www.movieposterbid.com/sales_results/2010_january_27th.htm Some of you may remember that after that auction, I posted to mopo a message titled: Consign Your Posters to MoviePosterBid.com for the best results!! (dated apparently Jan 30th) Well, Bruce got into a little tete-a-tete with me, very friendly on both sides. There was no animous, but he was trying to point out that you would do better consigning to him, and I was arguing that MPB would be just as good, depending on what you're looking for etc. At some point, Bruce commented that (and this is not a direct quote. I'm at the warehouse, supposed to be working, and I do not have a complete email archive here) he was the fastest road to auction, and that he always sold his cosnignments within a short period of time. I think he even projected a specific time frame, but again, my archive isn't here. Of course, I disputed Bruce's claim with my own experience, and no one else's. Bruce got a little angry at me, and shot me an email back privately that he would be returning that consignment. I didn't ask him to do so and I wasn't planning to, but honestly, I was glad he did. Mostly because at the speed they were being sold, he might still have some of them today. I did consign something to him since, so obviously it didn't color my feelings about consigning to him, and I still would if I thought he could help me. Of course, being my own auction, I really don't have that need. Anyway.. fast forward to sometime in either 2010 or 2011. I can't find teh exact item because it's difficult finding a Gene Autry autographed still in Bruce's archive and again, I'm not at my main archive either, but Bruce was selling this Gene Autry autographed still that was in my consignment to Bruce. Because I had never done an inventory check when the stills were returned, because I 100% trust Bruce, I couldn't tell you if I got everything back or not, or if I was properly paid. I trust Bruce took care of my correctly. Anyway, and Bruce should recall this well, the description in the still listing had noted that this still was from a longtime collector who had personally gotten this selection of stills Bruce had listed and personally had each star autograph them back in the 1950s and 1960s. Well I knew this still, and I knew that was incorrect, so I let Bruce know that I believed the consignor was lying to him, because Bruce had gotten this still in my consignment, and presumably had sold it and so the consignor could not have had the still signed in the 1950s. I didn't realize what Bruce was going to tell me after he did his research. what did Bruce find out? He found out that this still was from my consignment. He had neither sold it nor returned it to me, and it was incorrectly placed in this other guy's consignment. He thanked me for pointing it out. He correctly apologized to me for screwing up, changed the description and a month or so later, I got my check. Did any of you ever hear me tell this story before?? I know the answer... NO What would have been the purpose to do so? I was not then and I am not now trying to embarrass my friend. The story is only being told now because after everything that has gone in, not just concerning Bruce v Heritage over the last few years, but particularly with Geraldine's story within which Bruce has very clearly aligned himself with Geraldine indicating that Heritage makes lots of mistakes, I have to point out that with just this one consignment, Bruce made numerous mistakes, including misplacing part of my consignment with someone else's!!!! By the way.. I did not gripe to Bruce about it. Not one bit. Simply said, my consignment of stills was handled poorly at every juncture, but I have only once even alluded to it publicly, which was here on MoPo in a single email in a single statement. I do not as a matter of course try to damage my competitors. I have never felt it was necessary. If my competitor does a poor job, they will go out of business all on their own and then I will benefit maybe. But I get no benefit by continually beating on my competitor's reputation and I wouldn't do that to Bruce anyway, just as I would never do it to Heritage. One of my best friends got into a very heated argument with me on what he considered me taking it easy on Heritage. Hey, I"m not taking it easy on anyone. I deal with facts and in Geraldine's case, I don't jhave enough FACT to say Heritage got posters they say they did not. I didn't believe my parents when they would say "you have to believe me because I say so" and I'm certaionly not going to agree with Geraldine under the same circumstances. I'll make up my own mind thank you. No one I know is perfect. Not Grey Smith, not Geraldine Kudaka, not Bruce and certainly not myself. This overly long post is only to add some reflection and pragmatism to that idea. and now that that is done, I hope MoPo can stop being a battlefield between us and we can all live together peacefully, as we should, without people attacking each other. Geraldine has an issue with Heritage. I suggest Geraldine you let your attorney handle it with Heritage's attorney, so we can stop listening to it, and alot of other stuff.. Rich PS: I think everyone should consign posters to Bruce when appropriate, to Grey Smith when appropriate, to Sean when appropriate and to myself as well. They are all honest (including myself) and I'm positive that none of the people mentioned wold intentially hurt anyone Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
