Posted By:
AaronI've won several items in their auctions over the past few years and they are kind of a poor man's Mastronet.
They are generally much less organized in terms of planning out their auction dates, much more lax in terms of getting their catalogs out to their customers (if at all), their website is a Coleco compared to Mastro's with no "watch" list, gallery view and slow loading times, and their customer service is generally non-responsive and/or misleading (they are not above concealing problems with their items in their lot descriptions). (Plus they just raised to Buyer's premium to a whopping 17.5%)
This auction, for instance, they failed to list any of their auction rules on their website (including how to maintain bidder eligibility in extended time), failed to list a closing date on their auction on their website, and then had an auction-wide mistake in their countdown for remaining days that wasn't corrected until the final week of the auction despite being alerted to this mistake at least two weeks prior.
That said, I am a memorabilia collector and they generally get a terrific selection of rare items, so you kind of have to put up with all that nonsense if they have something you really want. (I won an item in the recently completed auction that I hadn't seen offered since the 2003 National in Atlantic City.) Many must feel the same way as I do, since the prices I've observed for vintage baseball memorabilia tend to reach the same "super-retail" levels that Mastro do.
I think if they could shore up their operation, they could legitimately compete with Mastro, at least in terms of consignor and bidder experience, if not dollars. But for now, they seem like a harried, disorganized, sometimes surly Mom & pop operation compared to the tightly run corporate machine that is Mastronet.