Auction house convicted 19.05.2004 for having cheated buyer by providing incomplete, and potentially misleading, information

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From:    Grelber [mailto:grelber@image.dk]

Send:    26. May 2004 22:53

To:        Ole B. Andrejcak; Ulf Ottosson; Bjørn Ringøy; Michael Fornitz; Per-Göran Carlsson; Kjell W. Riibe; Gunnar Thesen; Kjell Holmberg; Jimmy Häggqvist; coindealer@ ahl­strom-coin.com; Niels E. Stampe; Kjell Z. Andersen; Bernt J. Bertelsen; Bengt Hemmingsson; tonkin@tonkin.se; Birger Bentsen; mem@image.dk, + div.private

Cc:            Børge Juul; Jens Pilegaard; Lauritz.com; Nobel Antik; Jørgen Sømod; Jørgen Steen Jensen; 'support@auction.no'; Bjørn Nordbakk; Øyvind Skaar

Subject: Press information: Auction house convicted 19.05.2004 for having cheated buyer by providing incomplete, and potentially misleading, information

A subtle question: ” Which will be the first Scandinavian auction house, that voluntarily will be running to be convicted for already having cheated the bidders as well as buyers by providing incomplete, and potentially misleading, information ? ”

This topical European conviction from EU-member England sets up a precedent exactly on the same aspect of misleading, that Scandinavian auction houses exercises in the various published issues of the "Monthly Commentary", which are unmasking the rarity-cheatings. That is: "incomplete and potentially misleading [number of known specimens-]information". 

Exactly as in the Christie-conviction: data that have been used by Scandinavian auction houses were incomplete and insufficient. And Scandinavian auction houses are in full knowledge of this and have acted in bad faith.

Scandinavian auction houses have performed these cheatings on almost ALL types of Danish + Norwegian coins: 2-speciedalers, 1-speciedalers, ½-speciedalers, 2 d'ors, 1 d'ors, ducats, gyldens, crowns (krone), marks, skillings, pennings, offstrikes, gold, silver, copper etc. etc. etc. Systematically through more than 30 years.

Roughly estimated more than 99 % of all collectors are completely unaware of these various rarity-number-cheatings, which are widely occurring in the coin and auction bussiness.

Beware your money.

You can extremely easily get 'burned' .

And in case you choose to try to pass the 'monkey' on to the next buyer, YOU will be the one breaking the law and the next buyer will then go back to you saying: "Oh my friend. You cheated me. Pay my money back".

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Judge rules Christie’s misled art collector

Decision may have wide repercussions

Christie’s data found to be incomplete

Written by Heather Timmons, front page article in International Herald Tribune, May 20, 2004.

London: A judge in London ruled Wednesday that the auction house Christie’s International had provided incomplete, and potentially misleading, information about a set of urns that it sold to an art collector.

Taylor Lynn Thomson filed suit against Christie’s and the Marquess of Cholmondeley, the former owner of the urns, last year, claiming they were not from the Louis XV era, as Christie’s and the Marquess claimed, but were made instead in the 19th century.

Thomson paid £1.9 million, or about $3.4 million, for the urns. In her lawsuit, she estimates they are worth £30.000 at most.

Authenticity experts and art collectors have been closely watching the case because it hinges not on whether the vases are real or fake, but on how much information the auction house is required to give bidders. The decision on Wednesday could have repercussions beyond London, they say, with dealers choosing to qualify all the information they provide with a caveat about the source, or to be less definite about the age or origin of an art of antique.

In his decision, Judge Raymond Jack said he was ”70 percent certain” that the vases were made between 1760 and 1765, as Christie’s had said when it auctioned the pieces in 1994.

But, he said, Christie’s cataloguing methods gave an ”unjustified” feeling of confidence, and the auctioneer provided ”an incomplete picture and Ms. Thomson was entitled to a fuller one”.

The catalogue described the urns as designed by Ennemond-Alexandre Petiot for the Duke of Parma or one of his courtiers.

Christie’s should have told bidders that dating objects from the Louis XV era was unusually difficult because of the number of imitations made during the so-called Second Empire, a Baroque renaissance period in the mid 1800s, Jack wrote.

Additionally, there was not a ”jot of evidence” to suggest the vases were made for the duke or a courtier, he said.

Any monetary award or appeals will be decided later. Thomson is asking for her £1.9 million back, plus interest and her legal fees of about £800,000.

Christie’s said that it might appeal the decisions, but that it did not believe the judgment would have any long term impact.

The judge’s decision reinforces Christie’s central points that the urns are 18th century, and of superb quality, the spokeswoman said.

Other dealers were not so sure. In the art world, discussion is already becoming more focused on how things are described during sales, said Rene Gimpel, owner of Gimpel Fils, a London Gallery.

To be on the safe side, dealers could say that all the dates and verification in their catalogue are attributed to someone else, Gimpel said.

Thomson said she was pleased by the decision.

”For me this case rested on an important matter of principle: Whether a buyer of goods at an auction is able to rely on the auction house’s claims for those goods”, she said in a statement.

Whether or not a piece is judged authentic or a fake can sometimes vary depending on the experts that are available in any given generation, Gimpel added. The recent confirmation of ”Young Woman Seated at the Virginal” as a piece by Johannes Vermeer is good example opinions of a piece can shift, he said.

The urns are made of porphyry, a quartz and mica based volcanic rock, with an ormolu collar, a metal treatment that generally involved plating brass or bronze with gold. They feature symmetrical lions crawling over the lip, and a serpent.

Ann Getty, the oil heiress, owns an identical pair of urns, and is said to be one of the bidders that drove the price of Thomson’s vases up from the £400,000 that Christie’s originally estimated.

The New York Times

Press information from Grelber         [emphasizing by Grelber]

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http://grelbersforlag.dk/info/abonnementMaanedensKommentar.htm

Added commentary from Grelber:

"Naturally one could also try the right thing – to correct one’s wrong line of a(u)ctions ….. ”

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