Victim Location 03062
Total money lost $4,000
Type of a scam Other
This is a traveling auction that lists items to be sold – after going to the auction I paid way too much for a painting. Fool and his money are soon parted which is my own fault for not looking closer at the painting before. However the more I thought about what happened, I think it was setup to be a scam.They were selling a car however when it came to auction, the car quickly was priced out but no number was given of who bought the car and it is still on their website. I think that the real items are not sold. They called it a request auction so items were picked and moved to the back. The items had the right paper work behind it but if you did not look before it got moved to the back they you would not know its providence. When the painting came up for auction it was not talked about that it was a lithograph but I should have know too good to be true.
When the time got late they just called people over to the jewelry counter and picked items and sold them. Thinking back the items of value escalated quickly in value but never saw an anyone with numbers bidding.
I am guessing that how it works is they have a number of items some with real value and some with no real value. The real items get priced out by an inside person or the auctioneer. The people then think the other items have value and bid – they record the few people who purchase the items and move to the next city. Surprising for a auction of 30 people in a small new hampshire city selling a 200K car. Most of the time I never hear the number of the person who bought stuff so I am assuming only a few real people bought stuff the rest is just moved to the next city. They even have books in the viewing are that are never auctioned that say from the estate of White Bulger.
Not sure if the auction is illegal or not but really shifty auction and just want to warn people to beware if they go – I know my own stupidity cost me the money but would like to warn others.