Since our last article regarding Barry Stevens' report to Fine Art Registry that he was sold a forged Muhammad Ali photograph by Park West Gallery, we have been inundated with inquiries regarding forged, faked, grossly overpriced, and spurious artwork and sports memorabilia that has been sold by Park West Gallery (and others like Park West Gallery). In fact, Autograph Magazine Live! has quite a discussion going on the subject. This article is written as a result of a complaint we received yesterday from a victim who purchased Park West Gallery Rembrandt prints on which we have reported extensively. Yellow Kid Weil was a famous confidence man of his era. He swindled many in the early 20th century and the statement he makes in the quote above is true today! His tell-all book is filled with interesting stories of how everyday swindles and confidence games are done which, by the way, are no different than the con jobs that are perpetrated in the art and collectibles markets every single day in the 21st century. In fact, little has changed when it comes to swindling people. The standard, fool proof elements are (and always will be) the same: gain a person's confidence, find that fulcrum in people--twist it, capitalize on it, and go in for the kill.
Sadly, in this tough economy, many Park West Gallery customers are seeking to sell the artwork they purchased for princely sums to pay for things such as medical bills, mortgage payments and groceries. After all, Park West Gallery represented and promised its customers (through verbal representations) that the artwork they were buying was indeed "valuable" and "authentic" and was also a "great investment."
Albert Scaglione has signed and issued thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Park West Gallery appraisals which are not official appraisals at all. Rather, they are simplistic, grossly inflated, self-serving pieces of paper that reference a dollar figure with absolutely no valid support of any kind for the value stated.
Park West Gallery owns the artwork it appraises. Appraising ones own inventory is a conflict and not at all impartial. Outside of Park West Gallery, the appraisals are entirely meaningless and are not honored or taken seriously by any art professional, auction house, dealer, or independent appraiser that is worth their salt. Albert Scaglione is not an appraiser with any known appraisal association and is not qualified to issue appraisals based on the USPAP (Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice). However, as meaningless as the Park West Gallery appraisals are, they do serve a very important purpose for the Park West Gallery business model. The appraisals are used cleverly by Park West Gallery to keep its customers believing that what they purchased is indeed valuable and worth more, significantly more than the Park West Gallery purchase price. It's all an illusion! So, you see, in order to support the purchase price of what they sell, Park West Gallery must show and convince its customers that the piece that is being sold to them appraises for much more. We have yet to see a Park West Gallery appraisal that states a value for less than what the customer paid. On the contrary, the Park West appraisals are always inflated, and in many, many cases, egregiously so.
The critical question here is: Why does Park West Gallery issue or offer an appraisal on its inventory at all? Besides making a small fortune charging $35.00 for each appraisal (essentially for worthless pieces of paper that are no different than the text printed on the Certificate of Authenticity they issue on the artwork for free), why not just let the customer seek out his or her own independent appraisal? Ahhh, because the Park West Gallery appraisal is all part of the scheme to keep the Park West Gallery customers drinking the Park West Gallery Kool-Aid. How many reputable art galleries or art dealers offer their own appraisals of artwork they sell, own, or consign? Not too many, and if anyone is considering purchasing works of art or other valuable objects from galleries that do offer to write an appraisal, great caution should be taken before plunking down your hard earned money. Do your due diligence. Just because the gallery selling the work says its worth so and so--doesn't mean it is--the same goes for authenticity. Get a good, solid independent third party opinion before you risk your money. There is a good reason why Park West Gallery does not encourage its buyers to seek third-party opinions on authenticity or value of the inventory it sells.
Like Yellow Kid Weil, the Park West Gallery salesmen aboard cruise ships promised cruise passengers the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars--not a single word or verbal representation coming out of the mouths of Park West Gallery sales people or its gallery staff can be relied upon or taken as truth--and this is exactly how Park West Gallery tries to escape liability, by arguing in litigation filed by victims that their terms and conditions state clearly that no verbal representations by their salesmen can be relied upon. And so, if no verbal representations can be relied upon, this must necessarily mean that nothing Park West Gallery or its salesmen say about authenticity or value can be relied upon either. Therefore, all Park West Gallery sales must be a sham in one form or another according to Park West Gallery's own terms and conditions.
Park West Gallery simply can't have it both ways--either the verbal representations their salesmen make are valid and true, or they are not. Park West Gallery's verbal representations therefore (according to their own statement) are nothing more than hype, puffery, slick sales tactics, if not out and out lies, to induce cruise passengers to buy and to buy big. The Park West Gallery VIP auctions are being pushed heavily by them these days as they lost a big chunk of their business when they were booted from Royal Caribbean, Holland America and Disney Cruise lines after Fine Art Registry won a unanimous jury verdict against the gallery in 2010! It is a fact that the gallery preys on individuals that have never purchased a serious piece of artwork in their lives and have never attended a legitimate art auction in their lives. Let the buyer beware! Park West Gallery is still actively mining (over and over and over again) the same cruise passengers from Royal Caribbean and other cruise line brands to attend their VIP dog and pony show events.
It has been reported that the VIP events Park West Gallery hosts costs the gallery a small fortune and they have little time (depending on the length of the event) to work the invitees (intense pressure) in order to get sales to the point where they can cover their nut in expenses and also (if all goes according to plan) make an enormous profit at the same time. Ben Valenty put on the same kind of VIP dog and pony shows with his company--it's just a business model that works well for these types of art peddlers. It's easy to catch the unsuspecting, unsophisticated buyer who gets sucked into the promise of a grand trip or cruise and the attention that is lavished on them at these VIP events, not unlike a Vegas high roller being ushered into an all-expense paid suite in Vegas (but as we all know, the house always wins). The Park West VIP events are usually all expenses paid with plenty of wining and dining and buttering up of the invitees (Morris Shapiro is a master at this). There is little or no time for due diligence as the invitees are kept busy by being herded into endless pseudo auctions throughout the VIP stay. However, the minute the invitee stops buying at these VIP auctions--well, they immediately fall from VIP grace and typically aren't invited to another. The time that Park West Gallery customers stop buying at VIP events is usually the time that they are either saturated with having purchased so much Park West Gallery art (the same artwork by the same artists over and over again) they don't know what to do with it and/or are completely tapped out financially.
People are suffering economically and frankly there is no end in sight to the economic turmoil worldwide. So, it only makes sense that Park West Gallery buyers would try to keep their economic boats afloat by rushing to try to cash in on what Park West Gallery represented to them as "great investments" in art, before its too late. Some Park West Gallery victims are willing to take just about anything for the Park West Gallery art--in order to eek out just a fraction of a return on what they initially spent with the gallery. But even at pennies on the dollar there aren't any takers--no one is buying--not Park West Gallery inventory anyway, at least not those that know any better. Park West Gallery won't even eat its own dog food, despite promises at the time of sale that they will buy their own artwork inventory back.
It's clear that many of the 1.3 million satisfied customers that Park West Gallery claims to have are now waking up to the fact that they have been lied to by Park West Gallery salesmen regarding their artwork purchases--and we can't think of a greater breach of trust than to outright lie, misrepresent, or to lie by omission (which is another favorite tactic of Park West Gallery salesmen). It should be noted that when it suits them to do so, Park West Gallery claims their salesmen are not Park West employees at all, but rather are employed by a sham company controlled by Park West Gallery, known as Plymouth Auctioneering.
It's clear that many of the 1.3 million satisfied customers that Park West Gallery claims to have are now waking up to the fact that they have been lied to by Park West Gallery salesmen regarding their artwork purchases--and we can't think of a greater breach of trust than to outright lie, misrepresent, or to lie by omission (which is another favorite tactic of Park West Gallery salesmen). It should be noted that when it suits them to do so, Park West Gallery claims their salesmen are not Park West employees at all, but rather are employed by a sham company controlled by Park West Gallery, known as Plymouth Auctioneering.
To give our readers an idea of what Park West Gallery customers are facing today, what follows is an email we received yesterday from victims who will remain anonymous in order to protect them from being threatened and harassed by Park West Gallery and its lawyers:
My husband and I purchased 5 Rembrandt "etchings", millennium edition in 2008 on Royal Caribbean line. We have just tried to sell them, as cash flow is a problem for us now; I have just had open heart surgery and my husband, Tom has just had a full knee replacement. They [the Rembrandts] are worthless, not even etchings! but [are] photo mechanical copies. The same with the 2 Peter Max we bought - we don't know if they are authentic, but we do know they can be purchased on Ebay for 1/3 of what we paid to Park West. How can we get our money back???? Please address the issue of how to get your money back from Park West.
If indeed the Rembrandts this victim purchased from Park West Gallery prove to be photomechanical reproductions as stated, then Park West Gallery has some serious splaining to do. This isn't the first time this has been reported to us. There is a huge difference between photomechanical reproductions and true etchings from the plate (even if the etchings have been produced recently in the 21st century). Oh and to add insult to injury, these victims were just invited by Park West Gallery to another VIP event in the hope that they will buy more of the same no doubt.
Fine Art Registry exposed Park West Gallery in 2009 as it relates to the sale of its Rembrandt etchings. Here is a link to our 4-part series of articles on the subject. The Millennium Impressions.
Fine Art Registry exposed Park West Gallery in 2009 as it relates to the sale of its Rembrandt etchings. Here is a link to our 4-part series of articles on the subject. The Millennium Impressions.
And here is a 2010 video of a discussion regarding the Rembrandt Plate investigation. It's also important to note that Bill Smith (who Park West Gallery has hidden away as he knows too much) was responsible for the acquisition of the Rembrandt plates and was also responsible for the majority of the spurious Dali print inventory that Park West Gallery has acquired over the years.
If you feel you have been wronged by an art dealer or any other art or collectible dealer, please feel free to contact Fine Art Registry. We may feature your story. We will keep confidential any information for those who wish to do so.
3 comments:
Both very well written articles. I would also like to say how mad I am at Royal Caribbean. Now Park West is 100% responsible for selling me a fake Ali,and should give me my money back at least! But I felt very comfortable in that art auction because of RC. We spent thousands to sail on the biggest ship in the world (at the time)and never had a doubt that anything offered could be a fake. I thought it was a great perk to be able to attend this auction and buy art and memorabilia at discounted prices. That RC offered this to their loyal "Crown and Anchor" members as a reward for spending so much on the cruise. I have called RC many times just to see how far up in management I could get, and get someone to talk about PW or my fake item. They will not talk about it, just give me the number to PW. I tell them I bought this in your boat! You give me my money back, you call PW!!!! They say they are no longer on their ships, call PW. Does this clear them from what they have done???? In my opinion RC help create PW. I think RC (like always) trying to come up with another way to suck more money from their customers created this Art Auction. They tested it, liked it, and found someone who could handle the volume. Then they expanded to all their ships and PW never ran out of art. I think when that money ball got rolling they couldnt stop it. Is there enough art in the world to handle this volume of sales? Was PW pressured to keep up? Now people are figuring out that their art didnt appreciate the minute their feet hit land, like they were told. Or that its a fake altogether, that its near worthless, then RC washes their hands and walks away.
If you buy art from Park West keep in mind what Lisa Hershburger told me a couple of weeks ago, "Park West does not sell art for investment."
I have a vested interest in this whole sad saga I cant help myself read the articles and feel not that much different than a reformed drug dealer watching some of his clients go through withdrawals and see the devastation. You see I was an auctioneer for park west.
But i want you to know that during the early part of 2002 we ALL believed what we were told by Albert and Bill and Morrie and fact all of the PW crew We were proud to be able to stand up in front of the guests and 'show off' our amazing authentic collections. to a much lesser but in my case equally stressfull way we are victims too ( well thoses that left prior to all of this debyicle.
I would suggest you start up a facebook page and ask people to boycott any cruise line that supports this company. organise a protest in Detroit and placard the hell out of PW they will hate that.... But of course ALbert is protected by God........
Thank you, Anonymous, for your bold comment.
Fine Art Registry is well aware of how Park West Gallery trains its salesmen/auctioneers. We had two ex-auctioneers testify at the Fine Art Registry trial in 2010. The jury learned all about the "brainwashing" training sessions conducted by Park West Gallery, which still goes on today as we just recently heard from a Park West Gallery trainee.
With few exceptions, we don't hold the Park West Gallery salesmen accountable for the ripoffs, unless of course, they were, or are, fully aware that they are selling grossly inflated and inauthentic artwork and choose to turn a blind eye.
It is the likes of scallywags like Stoney Goldstein, (currently training PWG sales people), Rob Ducat, Chris Lindsay (who has now moved to New Zealand and is practicing the same dog and pony shows there with another ex-PWG employee known as McAllister), William Smith (who Park West Gallery has put in hiding), Chris Marchand, Morris Shapiro, Marc Scaglione, and others who are responsible for the damage and are accountable for their actions.
Ultimately, it is the CEO of Park West Gallery, who is at the top of the pyramid of the claims of fraud that must be taken to task for what Park West Gallery has done.
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