Elderly Couple Sells African Mask for $158, it Auctions for $4.4 Million

[robinjojo]

Sad story.  In hindsight perhaps the dealer should have offered to give the couple a percentage of the auction proceeds, as I am sure that this mask was destined for that venue.  That would have been the fair thing to do in my opinion.

I agree that this mask, with its rarity and cultural relevancy should be repatriated to Gabon, but it likely won't.

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

Let’s not talk about a mask and the poor couple for two minutes…

SURVEY FOR THE MEMBERS: and what if you’d see a very very rare and precious coin for sale (let’s say in a yard sale), definitely the seller doesn’t know the treasure he has in hands, what would you do ??? Be honest please !

[Heliodromus]

Is the yard sale in France ?

 

[Salomons Cat]

50 minutes ago, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix said:

SURVEY FOR THE MEMBERS: and what if you’d see a very very rare and precious coin for sale (let’s say in a yard sale), definitely the seller doesn’t know the treasure he has in hands, what would you do ??? Be honest please !

I wished that I would simply take the coin. If they just sell it in a yard sale they failed to exercise due diligence ☝️
But I know myself - I'm usually too honest. I once bought a jacket second-hand, found a few hundred Euros in a pocket and transferred them back to the seller. 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Salomons Cat
​ And I didn't even get a discount on the jacket 🤷‍♂️

[CPK]

48 minutes ago, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix said:

Let’s not talk about a mask and the poor couple for two minutes…

SURVEY FOR THE MEMBERS: and what if you’d see a very very rare and precious coin for sale (let’s say in a yard sale), definitely the seller doesn’t know the treasure he has in hands, what would you do ??? Be honest please !

If you're talking EID MAR aureus level of value (which would be comparable to the mask)...I don't know, I'd probably just assume it was a fake but buy it anyway on the 1-in-a-million chance it turned out to be real.

If I knew it was real, I'd probably buy it and then begin contacting people - experts, legal authorities, etc. - about it, to see how legit it is. If it turned out to be real and above-board, and therefore legally my property, I'd definitely sell it, and I'd like to think I'd give the yard-saler a nice comfortable percentage.

[red_spork]

3 hours ago, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix said:

SURVEY FOR THE MEMBERS: and what if you’d see a very very rare and precious coin for sale (let’s say in a yard sale), definitely the seller doesn’t know the treasure he has in hands, what would you do ??? Be honest please !

I'm paying the seller his asking price, wishing him a good day and heading home. Same thing I do when one pops up on eBay or something 

[DonnaML]

4 hours ago, robinjojo said:

Sad story.  In hindsight perhaps the dealer should have offered to give the couple a percentage of the auction proceeds, as I am sure that this mask was destined for that venue.  That would have been the fair thing to do in my opinion.

I agree that this mask, with its rarity and cultural relevancy should be repatriated to Gabon, but it likely won't.

Well, he did offer to settle the lawsuit by paying them more than $300,000, but they turned it down. Now they get nothing.

[Limes]

Read this is the paper. Very strange ruling, although I dont know all the inns and outs of the case, I cant see this happening here (hopefully, then again, one never knows...). A dealer is regarded to be a professional, acting with more information and knowledge about historical objects than private citizens. Hence he has an obligation to provide information, which private citizens dont have access to. But as I read it, the couple should have gained information about the value. How? Go to an antiques dealer, they did! Or do people in France all have expert knowledge about artefacts (or anything else) and extensive libraries? And knowing something about an object is not the same as knowing the value! My conclusion: that dealer is an ass, and offering merely 300.000 is just bad. 

9 hours ago, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix said:

Let’s not talk about a mask and the poor couple for two minutes…

SURVEY FOR THE MEMBERS: and what if you’d see a very very rare and precious coin for sale (let’s say in a yard sale), definitely the seller doesn’t know the treasure he has in hands, what would you do ??? Be honest please !

Well, be honest, always. I dont want to live with money that I gained in a dishonest manner. Talk to the person about it, is step one. 

9 hours ago, Heliodromus said:

Is the yard sale in France ?

 

Hopefully so. Apparently its ok there, to play dumb and get rich from it. 

[Restitutor]

This bit from the article puts me squarely on the side of the couple:

Quote

The couple alleged that the dealer also approached their gardener to get more information about their family and their ancestry to deduce the authenticity of the piece before consulting the auction houses, court records said.

According to the lawsuit, the dealer split the money from the sale with the gardener.

So the dealer went to these people’s personal gardener to gain more information on provenance, and then split half the $4.4M with the gardener! Why didn’t he go back to the couple for his provenance questions? Because then he’d have to fess up to the value! This dealer sounds like a real piece of work. I hope the couple gets every cent he made from the sale, and then gives him $158 as a consolation 😂

[lordmarcovan]

Ouch!

On a smaller scale, I once sold a US coin for $75, which sold on eBay in the neighborhood of $2K and was later said to be worth $10,000!

Short summary: it was a newly discovered die variety.  I congratulate the person who discovered it, as he had the knowledge, and I would never have discovered the variety myself.  No heavy lamentation from me (nor am I particularly interested in die variety minutiae).  I was just amazed- and I figure I got a good story out of it.