Capitol Auction & Estate Services LLC

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I have been a customer of the Capitol auction and Estate services for several years. I attended the monthly auctions regularly. I am delighted with the straight forward and honest manner they conduct themselves. I am a local leader of online sellers, helping steer people to buying and selling antiques and collectables. Terry is very knowledgable and is always willing to share historic context to the items for sale. Terry is the auctioneer, with an additional delightful lady auctioneer, Jill Marie. Jill Marie makes it fun to participate even if you are new to live auctions. No worries bidding against yourself, they don't take advantage of your inexperience. As a dealer I find Capitol auction a important part of obtaining interesting items to sell in my store. You will find great deals and friendly people at Capitol auction.

Hello,



I've used Capitol Auction to buy and sell items over the last couple of years, but "Never" again!!! I had a horrible experience with this company last night while using their online live auction site. I had been watching a particular item for a day, or two prior to the start of the live auction and had even placed a couple of bids on said item prior to the start of the auction and I had also noticed that another online bidder had also done the same. I even started watching the auction almost two hours prior to the time my item came up for auction, because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss the item, well that was a complete waste of my time!!! The item was an early 20c. "Aug. Otto" Austria Terracotta and the lot # was #151. The auction had "no" reserve price listed and so the auction item came to the floor, with active bids, no reserve price, a starting bid of $20.00 (which was set by the auction house I might add), with active bids and yes I was the high bidder at the start and at the end of the auction, for $35.00. The auctioneer received no bids above mine on the floor and even said to the owner Terry, in front of everyone in person and online "what do you want to do we have active bids online, but for only $35.00"? Terry then proceeded to tell the auctioneer, in front of everyone, let's just pass on that item. I was thinking to myself really, are you kidding me??? So let me get this right, if the item had sold for more than I wanted to pay, then I could have called the auction house and asked them to also pass on the auction, so that it might fall into my price range next time??? I'm sure that would have worked out for me. I was shocked that they had done this, it sure didn't seem very ethical to me! I would have written this review last night, but I wanted to sleep on it and see how I felt about what had happened to me the next day and after I had a chance to talk it over with some other people in the community and get their take on it, well I'm writing the review, so I guess you know how I'm still feeling about the auction. I guess I've learned my lesson, it's really not an auction house, because they seem to be able to manipulate the pricing and if they don't like how an item is going, even if that item has bids and no reserve attached, then they just don't let it sell at that time, wow I didn't think that's how an auction is ran??? I was always under the understanding that if an item comes to the floor without a reserve attached and meets, or exceeds the opening bid price that was set by the auction house and the item has multiple active bids, then that item sells, otherwise price manipulation could run rampant in this industry, but I guess I was wrong...