Gains and Losses on Titanic items
Peter Nivling
Andrys D Basten wrote:
> Somehow all this reminds me of one of those half-hour Rod Serling shows
> about what happens when old pieces are discovered by people with varying
> levels of greed.
>
> =======
> From The Oregonian online
>
> Sale of Titanic memento leads to legal wrangling
>
> The Associated Press
> 05/24/99 8:06 AM Eastern
>
> Bill Westby, 71, sold the ticket to Sanford & Son Antiques in
> Tacoma six months ago for $1,000.
My God! Fred Sanford (Red Foxx) LIVES!
Regards,
Peter
Bob Botts
Peter Nivling wrote:
> >
> > Bill Westby, 71, sold the ticket to Sanford & Son Antiques in
> > Tacoma six months ago for $1,000.
>
> My God! Fred Sanford (Red Foxx) LIVES!
>
> Regards,
> Peter
I wonder if 'Aunt Esther' entered into the picture?
Cheers... Bob
Andrys D Basten
Somehow all this reminds me of one of those half-hour Rod Serling shows
about what happens when old pieces are discovered by people with varying
levels of greed.
=======
From The Oregonian online
Sale of Titanic memento leads to legal wrangling
The Associated Press
05/24/99 8:06 AM Eastern
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- A man who sold a boarding pass for the
Titanic to an antique dealer -- who in turn sold it for 100 times
more money -- says he was ripped off and is taking legal action
to get some of the profit.
Bill Westby, 71, sold the ticket to Sanford & Son Antiques in
Tacoma six months ago for $1,000. At a local auction last month,
the ticket brought $100,000 -- the most ever paid for any piece
of Titanic memorabilia.
"When I heard the news, I thought, 'Oh, my God, no,'" said
Westby, a retired steelworker from Parkland. "I sat there and
cried. I really did. I really got taken on this thing."
He hired a lawyer last week.
But Alan Gorsuch, the antique dealer who purchased the ticket
from Westby, maintains he did no wrong.
"They priced it; we bought it. We sold it; we made a profit. End
of story," he said. "That's how things go."
No Titanic ticket had ever been sold at an auction, so there was
no way to estimate its worth, Gorsuch said, adding this one was
particularly valuable because it still had the passenger's
immigration card attached.
The ticket was bought by Jeffrey Trainer, a trading-card
collector from Allentown, Pa., in frenetic bidding that raced
from $5,000 to $100,000 almost as quickly as Gorsuch could call
out the numbers.
Gorsuch also charged a hefty auction fee and made money on an
album Westby had thrown in as part of the deal, grossing $112,00
in total. The album contained old postcards and pictures of Anna
Sofia Sjoblom, the Finnish immigrant to whom the ticket was
originally issued 87 years ago.
[ Amazing how innocent this guy is! Yet he now wants
what he feels is his portion of the sale, by someone
who knew the possible value, something he would not
have gotten himself since he didn't know how.]
Westby's sense of outrage was heightened when he learned Gorsuch
had given $10,000 from the deal to the nonprofit group Citizens
for a Healthy Bay.
"My God, why couldn't he give me 10 percent?" he said. "He should
have been fair and square."
[ I can see his point. It would have been nicer. ]
But Gorsuch said the money was by no means clear profit. He spent
more than $20,000 placing ads in national antiques magazines,
using the ticket as the starring attraction of a large antiques
auction he said cost more than $35,000 to produce.
As Westby explores his legal options against Gorsuch, he is
himself the potential target of legal action from another source:
Sjoblom's family members want to know how he ended up with the
ticket in the first place.
[ And so it goes. Human folk suddenly value something
enough to want to sue one another over the profits
for items long forgotten or abandoned.]
Sjoblom's grandson, William "Spike" Hendricksen, said he has
spoken to three lawyers in an effort to explore his family's
rights to the transaction.
[ I guess the first two weren't helpful? ]
Westby never met Sjoblom and is not related to her family. He
apparently found the ticket in a reinforced metal strongbox in a
house inherited by his wife, Betty.
She was the adopted daughter of a Tacoma couple who were
Sjoblom's aunt and uncle.
Westby said he never gave any importance to the ticket because he
didn't know anything about the Titanic.
But Betty said she had heard stories of Sjoblom's narrow escape
from death when the liner sank. After breaking a window and
climbing up the outside of the listing ship and over the rail,
the 18-year-old emigrant made it to safety in what is thought to
be the last lifeboat to leave the ship.
Decades later, when Titanic mania began seizing the country, Bill
Westby dug out the ticket in a time of financial need and sold it
to Gorsuch.
William Cookson, a consumer affairs specialist with the
Washington state attorney general's office, said such
transactions raise difficult questions about fairness in the give
and take of business deals.
Buyer and seller are responsible for looking after their own
interests, "unless it can be shown clearly that the buyer was
bargaining from an unfair advantage and intentionally took
advantage of the situation," he said.
=== End of article ===
--
===========================================================
Andrys Basten <and...@netcom.com> CNE, PC Network Support
San Francisco area - 510/235-3861
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Tom Pappas
>spoken to three lawyers in an effort to explore his family's
>rights to the transaction.
>
> [ I guess the first two weren't helpful? ]
<Or the first two didn't give him the answer he wanted. Or he needed the
third one to break a tie.>
Peggy MacPhie
legal knowledge.
I always thought when you sold something, once the sale is made, the new
owner is free to so what they will with it .... ?
--
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Tom Pappas <t...@pcslink.com> wrote in message
news:RHz23.2434$733.1...@typ11.nn.bcandid.com...
jeb
everything changed the day a burglar could sue the owners of the house
he broke into because he tripped over the kid's toy.
William J. Leary Jr.
Peggy MacPhie wrote:
> I always thought when you sold something, once the sale is made, the new
> owner is free to so what they will with it .... ?
I had a chance to ask a lawyer friend about this today. He said that in
some cases, and perhaps this one, the buyer can be considered not only the
buyer but also an agent. For example, if you go to an antique store to sell
an item, and make it clear to the people in the store that you have no idea
what it's value might be but are trusting THEM to be honest with you, then
they are potentially liable if they don't tell you the truth about the items
potential value. They can tell you it could be worth $10,000 then offer you
$100 if they want, but they have to tell you the truth.
The interesting aspect in this case, he says, is did the dealer know the
potential value of the item? From the phrasing of the article, assuming the
dealer was telling the truth about having no idea what it's value might be,
the answer appears to be "no."
In which case the dealer simply got lucky.
He also said he wouldn't want to be on either side of this case.
- Bill
Berg1912Ti
the auction was on the web, the price went much higher than expected. You
really can't tell what the price will be until you put it out to bid. The man
should have taken a chance and given it to the auctionaire as an auction item.
Then he would have reaped the highest reward.
Under the circumstances, I think that the auction was fair.
Most Sincerely,
Bruce M. Caplan
Editor of the new edition of "The Sinking of the Titanic"
The very first 1912 Titanic narrative-originally by Logan Marshall.