No – but in this case, you have a rare opportunity to buy barely worn, extraordinary items for pennies on the dollar. Valuation is always tricky, since the IRS defines valuation in so many different ways … retail, wholesale, insurance replacement, fair market and liquidation values.
Unexpected Opportunities
Sometimes valuable items can be bought at favorable rates when they are sold at liquidation value. In this case, the consignor is the U.S. Bankruptcy Court – which asked Hess Fine Art to liquidate the proceeds from the third-largest Ponzi scheme ever perpetrated in the U.S.
Because all of these items were purchased with ill-gotten gains, the perpetrator was not allowed to keep them. When the crime was discovered, the fellow, named Scott Rothstein, went to jail – and the first round of his and his wife’s jewelry sold at auction many years ago. When a second group of jewelry was uncovered, the attorneys for the government picked us and trusted us to liquidate the items for them.
A few high-value pieces we sold to private collectors for $100,000-$300,000 apiece. The rest was sold on our popular online auction site with an incredibly low liquidation start bid and no reserve. Some items brought as much as $200,000 each.
CONTACT US to see why the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, USF, the Shriners, The St. Petersburg Museum of History and MOSI have trusted us to liquidate fine art and antiques.
Always buying rare and valuable items.
Cash or auction. We make house calls statewide.
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This is an archival article formerly written and is for informational purposes only. The valuations in this article have likely changed since it was first written.
