We've been pretty lucky.
Perhaps because we're cautious by nature and perhaps because our business model greatly reduces the chances of theft from us or from one of our customers, we've escaped the sort of large-scale looting that does go on in some areas of the antiques world today.
We've seen it happen, and seen the effect it has on collectors. And we understand completely the devastating impact it leaves on a collector's psyche, being collectors ourselves. That some yobbo in a pickup truck could invade your home or off-site lockers and help himself to what it took you years to put together is not something we like to think about.
But we do. So, we take the usual preventative steps, install the usual safeguards and a few others to make thievery more difficult, try to live our lives, and help others who find themselves victimized by these no-necked, knuckle-dragging vermin pick up and, hopefully, get their precious items back.
Again knocking on that lucky nearby wood, we've never handled a stolen item or felt the bite when someone claims the piece you found under a dusty horseblanket in a Vermont barn is theirs, stolen from sweet aunt Maude in 1932. But we know folks who have.
As collectors of California art we were struck by the tale of Mr. Jim McCarty, who lost most of his beloved early California works to thieves many years ago. Jim took all the precautionary steps and still ended up losing his paintings, many by artists we collect ourselves. So we thought we'd post a picture of one of his paintings in hope you may recognize it and be able to return it to him.
We operate under the principle that if we all watch out for one another we come out stronger for it.
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