Historical Society of Ocean Grove museum. Pitman Avenue next door to Days. © Blogfinger .net photo
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
Every year the Historical Society of Ocean Grove offers two very popular antiques auctions: Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend. These auctions permit consigned items to be sold, and the auctioneer at these HSOG events was to be an experienced member of the HSOG Board who was also selling his own consigned items. There is no inherent problem with either of these policies.
The May 23 event at the Youth Temple seemed to go well until an email complaint surfaced on Facebook two days later, alleging that the auctioneer was “playing favorites with one individual in the audience all night long” giving the impression that the pair might have been trying to influence some outcomes of the bidding.
The complainant not only cited “wrong” behavior, but speculated that “money might have been passed under the table.” She also blamed the HSOG for not noticing the “wrong way the auction was conducted.” She said, “HSOG, you need to look at yourselves and clean up your act.”
The e-mail complaint did not allege “illegal” activities, but there is a law against “buy-back bidding” where a “shill” in the audience tries to drive up the price on certain items to help the seller of consigned goods.
According to Darrell Dufresne, a member of the HSOG Board, the group was horrified when the allegations appeared, especially after others made similar complaints to the Board. They immediately launched an investigation and they tried to hire a second professional auctioneer for September 4, but that was not possible.
Dufresne said that they found “no clear evidence” of illegal or unethical activity, but even the appearance of such could damage the reputation of the organization. When asked his opinion if something illegal had occurred, he said, “I don’t know.”
Meanwhile, rumors and speculation about the cancellation continued. In order to avoid an inevitable cloud over the Labor Day auction, the group decided to cancel the Sept. 4 event, review their rules regarding future HSOG auctions, and “look forward to a successful auction in the Spring .” One change will be that the next auctioneer will be an “independent professional.”
Suspicious: At the BF interview, two Board Trustees of the HSOG were present: Ted Bell and Darrell Dufresne. Also present was the new Museum administrator.
As I understood it, they cancelled the September auction because they feared that there would be a cloud over it and thus people wouldn’t trust the process until HSOG had figured out what happened in May and what changes could be made to improve the future auctions.
There was no mention as to why Liz Ogden, the current president, was not there.
As for the website, they don’t list any officers there.
I am unable to respond to your other comments, but perhaps somebody from the HSOG would reply to you here.
If you have more questions, you might formally present them to the Board.
—Paul Goldfinger, Editor @ Blogfinger
Suspicious
There is something fishy about the story presented in Blogfinger regarding the reason the auction was cancelled. It made me wonder why after years of these auction fundraisers that one rambling complaint based on conjectures of a disgruntled attendee who wouldn’t bid high enough to win the items she wanted would be used as a reason.
The Historical Society representative said there was an investigation. Well any investigation would have included contacting the woman who made the complaint. After viewing two recent posts by this same woman, it is obvious they had not. In her posts, she complained about them cancelling the auctions that she and her family look forward to these auctions every year.
It appears the Historical Society is not telling the full story. The person Darrell who was interviewed by BF is not even listed as an officer on the Historical Society website. Why is the President not representing them?
One has to ask, if an e-mail complaint about the auction was received by the HSOG within days of the May auction, why wasn’t any action taken until the middle of August?
Plus, there’s no evidence that anyone from the HSOG reached out to the person who complained to discuss the allegations of inappropriate behavior. People say all kinds of things on the Internet in the heat of the moment, and, as soon as the auction was cancelled, the same person who complained posted a comment regretting the auction’s cancellation.
And why did the auction have to be cancelled? Auctioneers aren’t professionally certified in New Jersey. Anyone from the HSOG could have stepped in to help the HSOG raise money to support the organization.
Ethically, I think they made the best decision. Shilling can ruin an auction’s reputation. In addition, I feel it should of been disclosed the auctioneer was selling a lot of items he had a significant financial stake in. Yes the HSOG got their 10% bidding premium on each item, but the real benefactor was the auctioneer. He made A LOT of money every Memorial and Labor Day! The fact the person resigned both as auctioneer and from the HSOG Board speaks volumes.
Regardless of said controversy, I look forward to a new auctioneer! The one in question clearly was not a ‘real’ one in the traditional sense. A professional auctioneer’s traits add momentum and excitement to the bidding process, and move the auction along at a pretty fast pace. The HSOG auctioneer had none of those traits, was slow and made it unnecessarily boring. I stopped going a few years ago for that reason. Best of luck to the 2016 Spring HSOG auction!
Defender. The accuser did provide her name which we did not post. I didn’t think that should be done on Blogfinger, just as we didn’t post anybody’s name who is involved except for Board-member spokesman Dufresne.
But I agree with you, and so does the Board, that the accuser had no firm proof—just suspicion. And, after that, there were others who had similar complaints about the event. Although the HSOG took the accusations seriously, they wanted to be fair and they did not charge the auctioneer with any wrongdoing. In fact they tried to hold the auction on 9/4 with him and another auctioneer, but they could not find one at so late a date.
The auctioneer voluntarily resigned from the Board, and the Board was left to try to figure out how to deal with a difficult situation.
Having interviewed two of the Board members, I was impressed with their efforts to see all sides and to come up with a sensitive solution.
They felt that truth was the best approach to the situation. I believe the HSOG will emerge from this event with a positive plan for the future. Every group can expect to have ups and down, and hopefully their reputation will be maintained.
This HSOG has a large reservoir of good will in this community on their side. –Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
This is character assassination of the highest order. Innuendo from a dissatisfied customer.
Paul,
Thank you for putting the facts out to the public
about the reason the auction was cancelled!