Entrepreneurs have built big Dallas auction house
Arizona Coin Collector
http://www.star-telegram.com/dallas_news/story/1053446.html
Dallas Star Telegram
Sunday, Nov 23, 2008
Entrepreneurs have built big Dallas auction house
By JOHN AUSTIN...@star-telegram.com
DALLAS - They were small change in the beginning. Now,
Steve Ivy and Jim Halperin are solid gold.
They are co-chairmen of Heritage Auction Galleries, a
Dallas-based auction house with sales of more than
$700 million this year. Ivy is a Fort Worth lawyer's
son who graduated from Arlington Heights High. Halper
in is an East Coast transplant who, like his business
partner, left college without a degree.
They used to be rival coin dealers but merged their
operations in 1982 and around 2001 began putting
comic-book and movie-poster auctions online. The
first movie poster auction, in November 2001,
brought in about $960,000. By the fourth auction,
sales were $5.2 million. Heritage Auction now
occupies more than four floors of wood-paneled
office space near Oak Lawn and Maple avenues and
has about 375 employees, including experts who
appear on PBS' popular Antiques Roadshow.
Heritage still sells coins but now also auctions
stamps, fine art, movie posters, comic books,
jewelry and Americana.
There's also auction sports memorabilia. The whistle
belonging to basketball creator James Naismith
commanded $13,145 at auction Dec. 9, 2002.
"It's a very exciting company," said Ted Pillsbury,
the former Kimbell Art Museum director who now runs
Heritage's fine arts department, adding that the
company plans its first auction of vintage photos
in December. "We are confident that it will be a
very strong sale."
On Thursday, Heritage could not sell a much-publicized
Italian early 18th-century masterpiece painting that
recently reappeared after being out of public sight
for hundreds of years - it did not meet the $500,000
reserve, a spokeswoman said. But Heritage did find a
buyer for an 1804 U.S. silver dollar the previous week.
It fetched $3.7 million.
Heritage's sales put it third in the world, behind
Sotheby's and Christies auction houses, spokeswoman
Kelley Norwine said.
Heritage also plans a December sale of vintage design
objects, Pillsbury said. With 25,000 unique visitors
per day to the Web site, there's a good chance the
objects will find buyers.
"I just love being a coin dealer," said Halperin, 56,
a twice-published novelist whose books deal with
cryonics and a foolproof lie detector that changes
not just the justice system but also society. "I
love being in business."
He, Ivy and Greg Rohan, another childhood coin maven
and now Heritage president, occupy 17th-floor
quarters atop the Uptown building. Visitors must wear
ID tags and sign in with an attendant who sits behind
glass off the black-and-white marble-floored lobby.
The vaultlike security is a must. After all, Heritage
is the kind of place where the company president can
ask an associate to bring out some gold coins for a
photo and have a pile of 150 $20 U.S. gold pieces from
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, worth about
$1,000 each, on his desk a few minutes later.
The halls are lined with framed black-and-white photos
of vintage New York street scenes. An affable
bespectacled beanpole whose shirt collar won't stay
down, Ivy has a sparsely decorated office, bespeaking
his role as "the business guy who tries to make
everybody pay attention."
Halperin, with dark, curly hair cut close, is more
intense, doesn't wear a tie with his suit and fills
his office with coin guides and original art from the
glory days of Mad magazine. His office view is downtown
Dallas' skyline to the south.
"The secret to our success is that we're all so
incredibly different," said Rohan, adding that the
Web site, loaded with information on ways to bid,
doesn't hurt either. "Our Web site is designed to
push the button and spend a million dollars."
Or, Halperin said, consign a million dollars of
coins, vintage guitars or, perhaps soon, collectible
vehicles. Ivy, who's CEO, shrugged off the nonsale
of the ballyhooed Italian painting last week,
calling it "a function of the market."
"People ask me what I did before I was in business,"
said Ivy, 59, who rented his first space at a Baker
Hotel coin auction when he was 12. "I told them I
was in fifth grade."
Star-Telegram: What distinguishes you from other
auction houses?
Ivy: We're actually the largest auction company in
the world founded in the United States. We're much
more transparent than traditional auction firms. We
provide a lot more information. Every item we've
sold in the last 15 years is online.
S-T: How did you get so big so fast?
Halperin: Our Web site really sort of blasted us
into the lead. I developed a vision of what
e-commerce was going to look like when I was writing
my novel. Fortunately, the vision was pretty close.
S-T: How did it evolve from coins to comic books?
Halperin: I've been collecting [comics] since the
early '90s. I said: "I'll tell you what. I'll
consign $300,000 or $400,000 worth of comics,
unreserved [for auction]." They went for that. Now
we have about a 75 percent market share in comics
and movie posters.
S-T: Did you envision something on this scale when
you began?
Halperin: I didn't think it'd happen this fast, but
I thought it would be successful. We're so
relentless. I mean, we just really believe in
collecting. . . . I'm not talking about Hummels
or Pokemon cards.
S-T: How do you decide to move into a new area?
Halperin: We go into areas where we can find a
great expert.
S-T: Have you guys tried anything that flopped?
Halperin: We tried African art and just gave up. We
had a really terrible auction.
S-T: You get to bid, right? What's your favorite
acquisition?
Halperin: The favorite? It was the border art to
the first Mad magazine. It depicts a lot of
characters. It's the first pen-and-ink depiction
of Alfred E. Neuman. I bought a logo that goes
with it, so now they're together. I look at them
50 times a day.
S-T: What's the coolest thing Heritage has ever
auctioned?
Ivy: It's almost impossible to say. We sold a
sword that was given to Grant at the end of the
Civil War. We sold J.E.B. Stuart's battle flag. We
sold the flag from the back of Peter Fonda's jacket
in Easy Rider. It went for about $90,000. Just
walking around here, it's amazing what you see. If
I had unlimited wealth I'd buy it all. It's just
neat.
S-T: Any viable scripts for your novels, The Truth
Machine or The First Immortal?
Halperin: Many have been written. None have been
approved.
S-T: You've got money. Why not film one of them
yourself?
Halperin: I think that would pretty much assure
its failure.
S-T: Any regrets about dropping out of Harvard
after a year and a half?
Halperin: Yeah. I regret I didn't do it sooner.
Online: Heritage Auction Galleries, www.ha.com
----------------------------------------------
What they've sold 1933 Babe Ruth All Star Game
worn jersey: $657,250
Jeans worn by James Dean in Giant: $35,850
Personal battle flag, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart: $956,000
Kurt Cobain's 1960s Mosrite guitar: $131,450
Johnny Carson's microphone: $50,787
Guinness World Records Largest Private Rare Coin
Transaction Ever: $15 million-plus for the Estate
of Ed Trompeter (August 1998)
World's Largest Auction of Comic Books, Comic
Art and Related Memorabilia: $5.2 million
(October 2002; included the collection of
Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage)
World's Most Expensive Action Figure: the
original GI Joe prototype: $200,000 (August 2003)
World's Largest Numismatic Auction: $61 million
(FUN 2005; later eclipsed by Heritage's $78
million FUN 2007)
Source: Heritage Auction Galleries
JOHN AUSTIN, 817-390-7874
...
Frank Provasek
Steve Ivy and I were both bid board members at Causey's coin shop in
Fort Worth during the 1970s, and which I
ended up managing between 1991-2001.