MOPOers Okay I need to weigh in on this mild kerfluffel regarding Prop Store, shipping charges etc. All of you know I work at Goldberg Coins and Collectible as the Director of the division. It’s my baby and that includes collections and shipping. The challenges are huge and besides myself there are three others. First bringing the auction to market, it’s never easy and it’s exhausting. Then two to three weeks later its auction time (in my case usually two days, may be three this July it got so huge)
The first issue is reconciling the auction and sending invoices. We can’t automate by single lots because 85% of bidders buy more than one item. It could be Laurel & Hardy signed photo and a guitar signed by the Bee Gees. How can any computer anticipate accurately shipping or whether possible to combine? That is a manually configured challenge. Then billing, dealing with a lot of new folks. We have been burned so many times by card fraud we like to wait three days with a card before shipping to see if rejected. It happens a lot. Those are frequently easy to ferret out because they are always desperate to have the item sent because it’s a birthday present for the wife (really? A Civil War rifle?) So I have had to start actually doing this on the dozen or so suspicious bidders,,, I Google their damn residence. I swear it works but its time consuming. Great example last auction, two 18k gold bracelets, a fast talker and kept calling to have immediately shipped. I Googled his shipping address and it was a bombed out trailer park in Baton Rouge with a blue tarp covering half of his roof. Busted But all of these payments and special demands come to the fore. It’s Summer, people travel, so a mix of can you hold shipping until such date, can you ship where I will be fishing etc. etc. And that becomes an additional challenge in that if they are out of state, we have to adjust the invoice to remove CA sales tax, but possibly increase their shipping There are so many variables. Also understand with each day and avalanche of payments are being called in, wire transferred etc. but the plates spinning to get those paid shipped as carefully as possible are happening at the same time. Every auction house knows the value of keeping their clients happy and I promise you every one of them bust their asses to make any issue right. Realizing the steps involved especially in auctions as large as Heritage, Prop Store, Bruce’s most certainly (which is a gold standard I shoot foe) might be worth a consideration. I am going to have probably 1200 lots my next auction which I am usually 700-800. So an advance plea for consideration, guys I have the damndest collection of entertainment memorabilia ever. Not film posters, (I have a few) but the photographs will blow your mind as well as some killer signed pieces. I also have a Thomas Jefferson signed Act of the 2nd Congress, I have a one of a kind NASA model of Friendship 7, Glenn’s Mercury Mission never before seen) I have modified Hassleblad used to train Apollo 14 astronauts, I have the finest collection of ancient glass Goldberg’s has ever had (you want to talk about difficult shipping?) and I have three Roman marbles from the Flavian period 1st Century AD that each weigh about 160 pounds. Either of three will look great with your Steve Reeves posters. I have Bobby Darrins original arrangement of Mack the Knife for trumpet who was none other that Doc Severenson, So a huge collection of various weights, shapes and sizes, and like any auction house, I want them to get there in perfect condition . And perfection can indeed add days. But its all good Freeman Fisher Long Time Mopoer Film paper lover Funny Guy On Jun 13, 2023, at 5:14 PM, Bruce Hershenson <[email protected]> wrote: Let me throw in a hearty defense of PropStore here, only because I have extreme personal experience with similar matters. In the past few months I have been telling buyers after our auctions we need a total of 3 weeks to pack everything, so 4 to 6 weeks does not seem the slightest excessive to me, because the same people who pack posters likely also have to pack props, which can be super time-consuming. And wouldn't everyone rather wait longer but get a superbly packed package, ESPECIALLY considering the man (and woman) handling so many packages and tubes have been receiving at the hands of the delivery services (the damage numbers are ten or twenty times what they used to be for us, indicating to me a total breakdown in their systems). One thing I added was a $15 Rush Fee that solely moves your order to the top of the stack (behind already entered Rush Orders). This has soothed those who DO have an extreme urgency to get their order. Maybe PropStore might consider adding this (maybe at a higher fee), or maybe it just isn't feasible there. I know everyone wants their items tomorrow (thanks to Amazon causing everyone to expect that) but that just isn't possible with expensive one of a kind collectibles of every kind/ So maybe cut PropStore a break! Bruce On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 4:14 PM Alan Heimann <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: To be exact many items requiring “special packaging “ On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 5:12 PM Alan Heimann <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Got in touch with customer service..they explained very small packaging staff dealing with complex orders ..estimating as long as 4 to six weeks On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 5:07 PM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Nope, paid over a week ago. No communications yet. Wim www.movie-ink.com <http://www.movie-ink.com/> On 2023-06-13 22:10, Alan Heimann wrote: > Not yet but I paid with a personal check > > On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 2:57 PM Christopher Quarles > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > >> Has anyone received their winnings in the recent auction from our >> MoPo friend Grey Smith? >> >> I won a clockwork Orange quad and paid for it within a week of >> closing, but have not received it yet. 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