Featured Dilemma - To Tell or Not?

agree Komokwa..have offered advice to vendors previously and have received similar responses or none at all..so no longer offer advice or explain...regards ..pewter2

 

I agree, that is why when it is an experienced seller, and I want to let them know something, I play dumb and pretend I know nothing. That often gets results.

My thought about having Bronwen ask about this is not to help the seller, but for any potential buyer who will not get what they are paying for.

 

My primary concern as well, but also educational for a seller who moves a lot of stuff & may encounter one of these again someday. Since sellers often look at listings for similar items when preparing listing for one of their own, helps prevent the perpetuation of inaccurate info.

This seller has some stern language about buyers who lodge incorrect 'not as described' complaints. All they need is to get into a fight with an unhappy buyer because there is no third source of information letting them know glass is a real possibility. Don't know that eBay would have anyone around capable of making the determination.

 

They're "only a venue".

 

Yeah, well, if they're going to set themselves up as arbiters of whether an item is as described or not, without having the expertise to make a factual determination, they're bound to make someone unhappy. Seems they have decided to inflict the pain on sellers most of the time.

 

Yep - by and large. Sometimes both parties are unhappy, but it's generally the seller.

 

Reply is par for the course:
Good morning, our GIA certified, in house gemologist is certain that this is hard stone and not glass.

Thank You
Amber
STL Auction Co

Well, they've been alerted, all I can do. When it sells for much less than they expected, they will have some idea why. I can't completely rule out that it is hardstone, but the more I look, the more I think it is not, & others experienced with cameos are going to have the same doubts.

Can't tell you how many times I have known GIA certified gemologists to be wrong when it comes to cameos or anything not a major focus of their training, nor how many times they've been perfectly snotty about it. The jeweller whose hardstone cameo is listed as shell probably also has a GIA Cert. on hand.

 

There is a flip side to that scenario as well. Several years ago at a small auction house in Asheville NC there was a 17th century american blanket chest in very poor condition. The top was replaced, the feet were totally gone but, the front 3 carved panels? as soon as i saw them i realized this chest was carved by Thomas Dennis, America's most celebrated 17th century joiner. I contacted a dealer i know who deals in early stuff, no, not Dennis they said because of this, that & the other thing.
Back to research i went, I was 99% sure it was Dennis but that still left 1% so at 5 a.m. that morning, i did a very stupid thing. I fired off an email to a leading scholar on Dennis and his work, 5 mins later i got an email back saying yes, it was in fact a piece built by Dennis, 5 mins after that he published it on his Blog! with pics, my research, the whole 9 yards!
So, after i in effect alerted every old furniture person in the entire nation, a beat up old chest, basically a fragment, at an obscure country auction that had an estimate of 1-3k sold on sale day for $23,000.00 USD
GOOD JOB JAMES! You IDIOT! You just threw away a Thomas Dennis chest!

 

Bronwen, you did the right thing. I also looked at the seller's listing for this, and all of the cameo listings they have. You're right, it doesn't appear that they are trying to deceive anybody. At this point, they will go with the info they have from the person who works for them ... and as you said, there is a small chance that it is actually hardstone. (But it's probably glass.) In any case, you did what you could.

 

Years ago, before I got into buying and selling jewelry, I took some unmarked pieces from my mother to an estate jeweler to be looked at. Three of the pieces were dismissed as costume, she barely looked at them.

I kept them and a few years later got my first gold test kit. Guess what? All three were solid 14K

Sometimes the "experts" are so full of themselves they don't bother to double check!

 

I've occasionally communicated with eBay sellers of old photographs. Usually I'm trying to be helpful by identifying famous 19th-century theatrical people whose photos they are selling as unidentified, or whom the seller has identified incorrectly. In those cases, most people are polite and happy to get the message. Some listings are changed and some are not, though.

However, if I do want to bid on or buy a photo and I know who the person was but the seller doesn't, I generally don't inform the seller ahead of time.

 

Good Idea! my problem was, i informed EVERYONE in the nation EXCEPT the seller, although i didn't mean too.

 

Quite a tale! By chance, it wasn't the expert dealer who was so sure it was not Dennis who placed the winning bid, was it? Do you think the news really spread from the blog so fast that it affected the final price? Or is it more likely there was another interested party who trusted their own judgement in the matter to a degree you did not trust your own? If you had been absolutely sure, would you have backed your certainty with that kind of money? I'm sure we all have our tales of the one that got away after we cut a hole in the net.

 

To be sure, if I am seriously interested in a piece about which I know more than the seller, I feel no necessity to share the info with them. It really does not happen all that often. At least a couple of times I have bought things I thought myself were most likely to be glass & was surprised to find they were stone. Have learned sellers are not best pleased to learn this, so in the feedback I just say item was even better than shown, which usually makes them quite happy.

 

I almost begin to think this is what separates 'experts' from devoted amateurs. I still think of myself as the latter, because I am certain much less often than I am right. Experts, on the other hand,...

Wonder what their GIA Cert. person would make of this one from my own collection:

 

No, dealer didn't think it was a Dennis chest & did not even bid. The blog post by the furniture scholar was what did me in, it alerted everyone that a "new" undiscovered Dennis chest was up for grabs.
No, i was not interested at all at 23k, chest was in need of major restoration, probably 10k or more i would say.
It wasn't that quick, several weeks passed between blog post and actual sale so PLENTY of time for the word DENNIS to get round.
Bottom line is, i let my doubts get the better of me and i got caught up in researching to much & trying to prove my theory, BIG MISTAKE!

 

I didn't understand the time frame correctly. Yeah, that would do it. Did you have any words for the blogger that you shared with him? Did you get credit for the discovery? Real scholars acknowledge those who make contributions to their work.

 

No, matter of fact dealer teases me about this fiasco to this very day. Wasn't scholar's fault, it was mine!
Couple of 17th century chests by Thomas Dennis, Ipswich Mass.

 

If he did this without your permission or even giving you credit, he's no scholar!

 

They don't look at objects the same as collectors, not even close. They are all about where, when and who. Is sure I was mentioned in blog post as the one supplying info but that wasn't the focus of post, it was all about a "new" Dennis chest discovery.