doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Major changes at Greg Martin Auctions???

I have been a fairly regular, although small volume, buyer at Greg Martin Auctions for a number of years. I hold a C & R license, and have bought some nice old shotguns and rifles (and even a few pistols) over the years for my collection. They held an auction this past December using ProxyBid, which was a fairly recent change from the older auction format of dealing directly through Greg Martin Auctions. In the past, things always went smoothly. Even the first couple of auctions through ProxyBid were fine. This one back in December, however, had a pretty major hiccup, which is only now coming to a most unsatisfactory conclusion:

I bid on perhaps 12 or 15 lots, mostly, as always, older German
shotguns and rifles. I was notified I was the successful bidder on 6 lots. In a few days, as is customary, I got an invoice sent both to my email address and to my home address, which notified me of the total amount due, including buyer's premium and shipping charges. BUT, instead of the 6 lots I was notiffied I had won, the invoice was for a total of only 4 lots. The missing 2 lots were each bulk quantities of surplus ammunition. This particular auction had many listings of surplus ammo lots in it. My initial invoice stated that the 2 ammo lots would be billed seperately. I thought nothing of that, it seemed fine to me, so I sent them a check for the 4 lots billed, which have since been delivered to me.

After a couple of weeks more went by, I still had received nothing else on the 2 remaining lots of surplus ammo, so I began emailing them to find out what was up. We are talking about approximately 1,200 rounds total. I got no email replies. So, I picked up the phone and began calling. I made several calls over several days, each time telling my story to different people, 3 people over 5 calls, each documented. Each call was a total dead end, each promising to get back to me, but that never happened. Then comes an email sent out apparently to the entire email list they had stored telling of the move of Greg Martin Auctions from San Francisco to Irvine, Ca. I thought that's an ideal way to really loose things that formerly were only misplaced, so I called again. This was on a Saturday morning, again documented.
I got a gentleman this time in their shipping department in San Francisco. This was far and away the nicest and friendliest person I had found yet. He had an unforgetable name, not important what it was, but it belonged more in the rural South than in San Francisco, so we shared a couple of jokes about that. He said hold on a moment, and came back with the pronouncement that he had the 2 missing lots right there!! Maybe this was progress, I thought. He said he only needed shipping instructions from the main office to ship them out to me, and he would try to find out what had happened when the office opened again on Monday, but that everything there was in a turmoil due to their upcoming move to Irvine. Monday came and went, as did Tuesday, then Wednesday. I started calling again, only to get recorded messages now saying everything was closed down, they would open again in Irvine in about 3 weeks, call back later. Emails got a similar automated reply.

After this brief (but enjoyable, of course) sabbatical, I got an answer again to my calls. This time I was turned over to a female C.O.O., who listened to my stories, then asked about invoice copies, which I immediately scanned and emailed to her. Said she would check it out and get back to me. I began to routinely send emailed follow-up inquiries once a week. Again, as has alwaays been the case, I got no replies.

I called again the last week of April and asked to speak with this person, the C. O. O. She said she did remember, but that "her staff" was having no success in finding the missing lots. When I reminded her of the shipping department employee who said he found the missing lots, she said she would check with him and get back to me.

Getting pretty tired of all this apparent run-around about now.

Late last evening I got an email that said "I have made every effort to find it for you but to no avail." I thought that was just unbelieveable. I sent off another email and this time, for the first time, unloaded just a bit. I said how "disappointed" I was with all this, and how it was, in my opinion, just a "major screw-up" for a company of the fine reputation of Greg Martin, how did she expect to keep customers, etc, even aksing what about the poor sap who consigned his goods to their auction house, was he just out of luck, as I seemingly was, etc, etc..

This morning she replied, seemingly washing her hands of it completely, telling me, among other things the following quote:
"The staff member you spoke with in San Francisco is no longer employed here. My job as COO is to make sure that these types of problems do not occur in the future, as Mr. Martin is not involved in the operation of the company any longer. The transition has been difficult but we are striving to make this a better company than before."

So, Greg Martin is no longer "involved in the operation of the company." What the heck does that mean? Whatever it means, they have slipped, in a very short period of time, from one of the better gun auction houses out there to one that apparently cares little for their bidding customers. I got a complete and total "run-around" from the first moment I started trying to locate the 2 missing lots I bid on and won. The single employee who made a good effort to help me, actually finding the missing lots, is no longer there, and the owner of the business is either no longer the owner or has simply retired and turned over operation to folk who first don't understand guns and second don't give a rip about the customers.

I am not one to come on board here and spew out a rant like this, but this seemed important enough to make it known. I would appreciate any other related information about these goings-ons, or any other knowledge about what has happened at Greg Martin Auctions.

Thsi certainly is not the end of the world, or anything near that. There are other auction houses to buy from, I'll simply move on and continue to add to my collection from other sources.
Please feel free to share your experiences along these lines.

Perhaps Nancy Pelsosi has directed pork-I mean stimulus funds to purchase all the gun operations in her home district


I called them on a gun I was going to bid on,a pre war Walther PP that had a numbered magazine but not to that gun.It was matching to one 3 lots down however and tried to explain it but had little luck.
Sorry to hear of the issues,they used to bring some guns here to Portsmouth for previews but stopped that.

That is quite the ordeal, you have more patience than I. To keep it short and simple, I do know a guy who had trouble getting his gun back that did not sell. Perhaps not the same auction, but he could not find anyone who could tell him what the high bid was on this 5-6 digit gun. Odd.

I have always had splendid dealings with Greg Martin Auctions, although I have not purchased anything in the past two sales. I am sorry to hear that Greg is no longer associated with his company. I spoke with him often when he was at Butterfields and later when he started his own company. I guess we will see what the future holds.

Best Regards, George

I'm sorry to hear about this as well as I've had good dealings with Greg Martin Auctions in the past.
Jim

http://www.gregmartinauctions.com/common/aboutus.aspx

This give a little info about the change of ownership.
FWIW

That page shows old information, the changes I encountered are new. I spoke directly with Mr. Martin this past fall, even though the above link shows the company was sold to the conglomorate before that time. He clearly stayed some time after the sale, and no doubt provided the good leadership to keep the firm straight. He is now no longer associated in any way, and the firm seems to have immediately suffered, perhaps seriously.

Old news or not, it tells the story. The new owners don't have time for sellers or buyers of trinkets like five figure shotguns. Oh well, thanks for the warning.

I posted David Carde' of some of the concerns expressed here and I suspect that we will be hearing from him shortly.

Best Regards, George

David replied today with the following and asked me to post:

"Dear George: Thanks for letting me and Carol know about the post on the website. I wanted to clarify a couple of points, including that Greg Martin is still with our company and is our company's president. While Carol is absolutely correct, he is not overseeing the operations at our headquarters in Irvine, he is still in san Francisco (we maintain an office there), and is advising major collectors on buying and selling at auction and is a great source of knowledge for our other experts on-staff. For those who don't know Greg, and would like to meet him, he will be at out next auction in June in Anaheim.

I am terribly sorry about the ammo that the gentleman is referring to. It's extremely difficult to try and fix the issue now (it's almost been six months). When we opened our Irvine office in February, we did not move the ammo and all sales at that time were canceled. Note this was already at least 45 days after the auction.

Sincerely,

David Carde
Executive VP
Greg Martin Auctions"

I guess we all know that California has some peculiar laws when it comes to guns and ammo. I guess that's why it's called "THe Land of the Fruits and the Nuts". It is good to hear that Greg and David are still connected with the auction. David asked me to post this and so I did.

Best Regards, George