Barrett-Jackson ejects Keith Martin/For all you Barrett-Jackson fans...

LOL, the only thing going through their mind is the fear that they will have to pay more to show B-J 2008.

Dale

 

Doc, I go to auctions for their entertainment value and to drool over certain cars. Now, I know people who have sold and brought cars at major auctions. Some of them are frequent posters on F-Chat. However, they know their stuff. More importantly, they know their cars.

That said, I'm a punk amateur. I came close to selling a car one year, but cancelled because I really didn't know what I was doing.

Thus, I see all of this as one lawyer put it to me, "It is nothing more than the orderly redistribution of wealth."

Dale

 

All in all, Jackson, Davis and their version of three card Monty seem ripe to be taken down. Some of us have suspected for years that something is rotten in Scottsdale, and maybe this year B-J pushed it a little too far. This going to be fun to watch.....I wonder how much complicity is going to rub off on Speed and its parent company. That's where the deep pockets are.

Jack

 

They're on the phone to Antiques Road Show over at PBS:

"Hey guys. Remember when that guy brought in the old Civil War sword and it turned out that he was a shill for the guy doing the appraisal?"

 

Actually, Arlie, you should be overjoyed. If the muscle car market crashes in any way like the Ferrari market crash, in a few years you'll be able to buy fully restored cars for way less than the cost of the restoration.

All of the big bucks being spent right now on restoration will be available at a big discount.

 

Did the sword and scabbard have matching serial numbers; I don't remember..

 

Can I place my order now for a 100 point Lusso at $30,000, and a 100 point 330 America at $10,000?

 

Sorry, I was talking about what happened around 1991-1994 for Ferraris.

I should have been more clear.

However, get your orders in for Plum Crazy Hemi Cudas!

 

http://fourwheeldrift.wordpress.com

if someone wants to post the full article in this thread (or another on F-Chat) that's fine.

 

In the annals of american history it must be remembered that we as americans will excuse a mistake, we do not excuse arrogance. Hubris has been the downfall of many.

 

Your article has promise, but it needs work in a couple of areas.

#1, you say "In past years, Keith nor his publication have been critical of the goings-on and rumors, while other collector car journalists have been outwardly screaming that something stunk."

But you don't give a link to or a quote of any such "other car journalists."

#2, you miss that SCM *has* been critical in the past, giving auction seminars for bidders to learn how to spot the real money bidding on a car versus shill bidders, as well as SCM's May 2006 issue that front-paged Chandelier Bidding.

#3, you need to be more specific on the one example that you provide of the Judge's car being auctioned off more quickly. More quotes from participants and more details...flesh that example out.

#4, you need more than 1 example to hammer home your point. The Futureliner fiasco from last year comes to mind (where the auction was hammered closed at $4.1M, yet there was no $4.1M bidder, no $4M bidder, and no $3.9M bidder...BJ had to drop back to Pratt at his "losing" $3.8M bid on live TV and somehow scramble to pretend that he had a $4M sale).

 

No Doubt,

All good points. I should explain that Four Wheel Drift is targeted more for news and opinion for general hobbyists, less for knee-deep enthusiasts like us. It is for this reason that I try to keep the postings of a reasonable size/length, which meant leaving much of this other info out.

Keith Martin has done a good job of doing general auction education via SCM. I cannot recall a time when he has been an outspoken critic of Barrett-Jackson in particular, either in print or among car-show mingling. Since many of the "other journalists" I talk about have been outspoken less in print than they have been when speaking off the record, I decided not to include some specific names. Most of them would be unrecognizable to most folks, because they are contributors, rather than big names of the Brock Yates magnitude.

The big issue is that there are many examples of cars being auctioned-off under the contracted time allotment, and the telecast showed it happening. The judge happens to be the guy who has started the ball rolling.

I watched last year with the Futurliner, as well as the behind-the-scenes series that showed that fiasco unfold. That actually was less of an issue, IMHO, because it was the opposite -- they thought the guy had bid when he hadn't. As someone who has worked as a bidder's assistant in an auction, it's easy for this to happen...The back-room deal with Pratt was haywire, and it is pretty well known that B-J agreed with Pratt to a $3.0M price on the Futurliner, and B-J figured out a way (ie -- giving $1M in a paper transaction) to make it 4M for the records.


I appreciate the feedback. Balancing stats, info, opinion, facts, supporting information, and maintaining an interesting article is a tough thing. Since I have two very different deliverables -- a traditional newspaper collector vehicle column with huge readership among non-car people, and an online automotive news site where readership is all-over the map, I sometimes am a little off in how much of each element the readers want.

And also, an interesting bottom line on this -- we're still figuring out who knew what and when -- and who is willing to go on record! Typical media

Again, thanks for taking the time to read and provide feedback. Unlike some writers, I'm happy to get feedback in any form, because I know people are actually reading.

 

No Doubt. I attended the 2003 SCM "Insider Seminar" at B-J. Craig Jackson, as a special guest of Keith Martin, told us that the muscle car market was going to take off. He also said that he personally preferred sports cars like Ferraris, but you can't argue with the market. Memory is not the first that goes, but my recollection is that Keith and Craig were pretty much in agreement on where things were headed.

I don't recall any comments made at the seminar regarding shill bidders. In fact, I don't recall any negative comments. Keith gave us pointers on how to evaluate cars and avoid fakey dos. Overall, the whole thing was very upbeat.

However, just about all of us were there for fun. We knew that we didn't know enough to actually bid on any cars. I can recall that there were dinos in the staging area that could be had for $50k, a few TRs, and so forth. But the real fun was just tripping down memory lane looking at all the muscle cars. I can't recall if 2003 was televised or not. However, I do remember watching the screens and being stunned by how much some muscle cars were selling for, like $25k for 1967 goat hardtops. (If we had only known.)

I have never been back, but I have followed the madness in SCM and on TV. For 2004, 2005, 2006, I do recall Keith Martin being one of the lead cheerleaders.

So sumthang happened on the way to the forum in 2007. What, I don't know. But something came undone.

My point is not to defend Craig Jackson. He may be the devil for all I know. My point is that Keith Martin was a willing participant until this year. Thus, I have to think that there may be two (or three) sides to this story.

Dale

 

I don't think that KM *knew* how to spot shill bidders back in 2003. By 2006, however, he was advising on the subject and the May 2006 SCM most certainly mentioned it as well as noted that all auctions were breaking the law in all 50 states by employing shills.

 

Why would BJ drop down to $3M on a $4.1M auction close? That's what the public isn't getting.

OK, lets pretend for the sake of argument that the final $4.1M bid was in error, an honest mistake.

Well, where was the $4M bidder? Where was the $3.9M bidder?

And that's where the fraud was going on...at a level that couldn't be ignored any longer.

Pratt had the $3.8M bid. BJ had tried to foist the $4.1 M close on the $3.7 M bidder, but that bidder was **clearly** on the video swinging both of his hands horizontally while screaming "I'M OUT!"

Now, on a $40,000 car it's not such a stretch to convince a monied bidder in the height of passionate bidding that he just "won" a car for $41,000 even though his last bid was $37,000...

...But convincing a guy who screamed "I'M OUT" at $3.7M that he just won a vehicle at $4.1 M is a much more problematic scam. And the mark didn't go for it that time.

So BJ had to scramble. They'd been busted. The $3.7M bidder was telling the TV cameras to call the FBI.

Duh.

So BJ goes to Pratt. But Pratt wasn't out at $4M. He wasn't even out at $3.9M. He was out at $3.8 M and he was savvy enough to recognize that BJ had bumped up *his* earlier bids.

Now you point out that certain people "know" that BJ sold Pratt the Futureliner for $3M...


...Well, that's a big deal. Wouldn't a real $3.1M bidder have wanted in on that action?!

Except, there was no real $3.1M bidder. That's the only thing that explains why BJ sold the Futureliner for $3M as you state.

That would be an enormous amount of auction fraud. From a $4.1M "sale" down to a $3M deal.

7 figures of shill bidding. Outrageous.

 

Keith is (obviously) not stupid, although some of his decisions may have not been too bright. Certainly he knew how to spot shills in 2003! Any number of people here have known how to spot shills for 30 years or more! In fact, I wouldn't doubt if some of the people here have acted as shills!

 

I think that it's less obvious than you are giving credit, however, I've been wrong before. Please tell me what two things tell you that the bid went up due to a shill.

 

Oh, I agree entirely, No Doubt, if that one bidder was a shill. Evidently, that guy (the big pattern-bald fellow with the white tee-shirt) was real, but also somewhat of a druken in-your-face type.

From what the tape shows, and from what I heard from those on the floor last year, he said "I'm out" several times, then bid back in at several points to raise the bid. (This is very common, and those of you who go to auctions know how many times people say they're out multiple times before coming back in.) In this case, it shows he was out before and never raised the bid -- but I cannot remember exactly at which number his final bid was.

Even though he had bought many cars earlier in the auction (I can't recall exactly how many, so please don't hold me to a number -- but I recall at least three other cars,) Craig Jackson immediately accused him of running up the bid without intending to buy it, so the guy went nuts and told him to screw-himself (in so many words.) Jackson knew he had to salvage, but had already killed the possibility with this drunk, belligerent guy.

Jackson realized he was either going to have to re-auction the bus (where it would probably have gone for well under $2M--maybe under $1M without that other bidder,) or simply work something out with Pratt. Now all I have are mutliple rumor sources, but everyone points to $3M as the final out of pocket for Pratt. Even so, personally, I think he overpaid, but that's just me.

Again, I'm not disagreeing that the Futurliner was a big problem...it might have even been all-out fraud, but I simply do not know Arizona auction law enough or the hard facts (or the reliable enough sources) to say that it was...

In the end, I just hope that justice is served if it is needed. Barrett-Jackson has at this point been very good for the hobby, yet extremely bad in many ways...not unlike the Ferrari/Euro-car craze of the late-80s/early 1990s. We might be in for a market correction at the high-end auction pricing, but that really doesn't affect the majority of us, since we buy at regular market prices (not Barrett-Jackson one-day-only mark-up pricing!)

Cheers,
Sam

 

All that follows is speculation, but I have heard enough people in the collector community talking up this scenario.
Jackson "needs" in the worst possible way to show evidence of a rising market, so he goes to work with well known clients cutting deals for several cars where the hammer falls quickly and the favored son gets the deal. In return these same clients agree to buy other cars at pre agreed limits, but stay in the bidding well past their number, assisted by phantom bidders raising the price. The hammer falls at $5 million, but the deal was done in the backroom at $2 million and that's what the buyer pays. The real value of the car was never $5 million, but to the attendees, Speed TV viewers and the world at large $5 millon is reported and the auction seems to be a rousing success.
Somewhere in here there is a grain of logic that seems to be just what is needed by the parties, except for the one universal law - the truth will eventually come out, and like most large scale fraud people will say how could happen. Think Enron, Global Crossing, and all the rest of the option backdating and accounting restating that goes on. Big business cheats with impunity because they control the process and it's very hard to find the trail.

 

What are some of the ways to spot a shill?

 

Here is Keith Martin's NY Times article today. Bottom line - all four auctions were down compared to 2006. No accusations, or slanderous response.

Kevin S.
Orchard Park, NY

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/automobiles/collectibles/28AUCTION.html?_r=1&ref=automobiles&oref=slogin

 

Are you talking about a specific car, or in general?

 

I think Keith has enough problems at the moment without actually writing something in public which might cause a lawsuit against him...

 

In general. Or for a specific car. Your call.

For me, it takes a fair amount of paying attention and knowing two key things to even have a chance at spotting a shill. For that matter, I'm hard-pressed on more than one occassion to discern the important different between a physical shill bidding compared to the auctioneer inventing a chandelier bid from whole cloth (there's more than one way to bump a bid, after all).

For you, lots of people know how to easily spot a shill. Frankly, you have something of value that you could teach people like me if that's really the case.

So by all means, please show Fchat how to reliably spot a shill at an important auction (and I mean no disrespect in so asking).

If you can't teach Fchat these things, then people like me may continue (potentially falsely) believing that very few people know how to consistently spot shills (which is why I said that KM probably didn't know how to spot them back in 2003, as for me this is a difficult proposition that I can't see many people managing even if they've been immersed in the auction sub-culture).

 

Hey, I feel, using Oprah's famous words, validated:

At least I can still figure an average...

BTW, No Doubt, you should change your name to Bulldog. You just don't know when to quit. I can just imagine the heavy eyeball roll going on across F-Chat when you say that Keith Martin didn't know about shills until 2006. That really is funny.

Listen, shills have been part of the auction bidness since before day one. Furthermore, there is no way to recognize a shill. I have never brought a car at auction, nor have I ever sold one. But, I have talked to many really sharp people who have done both. The word is that you have to know your cars. If you're bidding, you know what the car is worth BEFORE you start bidding. If you're selling, you cut deals before hand. No reserve doesn't really mean no reserve. Sorry, but that is the way it is.

Dale