This week, I’m afraid I won’t be posting a LOUIE of the Week award. Over the weekend, I visited New York, flying from California, shooting video for a new David Bromberg concert video, before returning home very late last night. I had a wonderful time, and am very grateful to my friends for making it all so enjoyable.
Next week, I’ll post a new LOUIE of the Week, be sure to check the blog on Monday… or maybe Tuesday.
In the meantime, I’ve been reading some interesting news about the big eBay record collection auction that happened last week. While it did “sell” for more than the $3 million minimum bid, apparently the top bidders were not serious. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette provided an overview of the situation:
Paul Mawhinney, whose road to retirement seemed to be paved last Thursday, is now playing the waiting game.
The owner of Record Rama has closed his 41-year-old Ross store and is hoping for offers from two potential out-of-town buyers who visited on Monday.
Mawhinney is hoping they’ll come in with an offer on his warehouse of nearly three million LPs and CDs that the collector estimated to be worth nearly $50 million. On Friday night, he and agent J. Paul Henderson learned that the winning bid of $3,002,150 from “jopsoup” on eBay was a fraud, as were the other five bids.
Henderson said today they will not re-list the collection on eBay until after they hear from the new suitors.
The A.P. write-up provided more details:
An alleged buyer had won the online auction, claiming he would shell out $3,002,150 for the collection of nearly 3 million vinyl albums, singles and CDs.
But an Irish man whose screen name appeared with the winning bid said he was unaware of the bid until after it had been entered and that he had been a victim of identity theft.
“He claims he went to an Internet cafe and got the e-mail with the invoice from us and wondered, ‘What the hell is this?”‘ Henderson said.
One dedicated record collector questioned the actual number of the records in this collection, and made these comments:
I don’t want to discourage anyone who might want to buy it. I still find the count and the value a little suspect since it has no methodology for how the arrived at either. When you see these huge stores, never forget that you are seeing all the records that are left over after they have sold the good stuff. That is the difference between a store and a library.
You can read more about this situation by clicking on the Inform.com overview page, which collects articles from various sources.