Art News and Articles: FAR® Columnist
Wellesley House Antiques
A lesson in keeping records and photos of antiques and collectibles
by David Phillips
In the early hours of Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007, while Andrew and Kelly Vogel, owners of Wellesley House antiques, were sleeping in their room at the Hampton Inn hotel at the Turnpike in West Palm Beach, Florida, thieves, under the eye of hotel security cameras, stealthily towed away their 16’ cargo trailer neatly packed with close to $1 million worth of antiques which they had not sold at the show — Zita Waters-Bell Winter Antiques Fair, West Palm Beach. Instead of heading back to their home in Illinois to get ready to leave the following Sunday for the next show, the National Antiques and Garden show in Nashville, Andrew and Kelly, still reeling from the loss of all their merchandise, found themselves talking to detectives for five hours.
Wellesley House Antiques
Andrew and Kelly Vogel have been in the antique business since the mid 90’s when Andrew left his corporate marketing job and the daily commute in favor of the entrepreneurial life. They specialize in buying high end English antiques, importing them from the UK and selling them at shows throughout the USA. They import their wares by air and they
do not restore them. They buy items that are already in good condition and if any clean up or polish is needed, it is done by the
English tradesmen before they export them: “We are very, very particular in what we buy and bring over,” says Andrew. “Quite
frankly there isn’t that much of the extreme quality stuff available to buy but that is what we look for and bring it over. We choose
not to pay shipping for mediocre merchandise,” says Andrew. “After all, shipping costs the same either way.”
The Vogels routinely pack up their wares into their 16’ by 7’ by about 9’ tall blue cargo trailer and hit the road, heading for shows as far afield as Aspen and West Palm Beach. It used to be 33 shows a year. Now they have diminished by attrition down to about 14 a year.
The Zita Waters-Bell Antiques Fair in West Palm Beach has traditionally been the first of the year’s show for the Vogels for the last five or six years, although the show has taken place in the same location, the Crowne Plaza in West Palm Beach, for 25 years. The 40-45 dealer show takes up the majority of the ground floor of the hotel as well as the lobby, a couple of anterooms off the lobby and the grand ballroom. It includes everything from Greek artifacts and archeological finds such as dinosaur eggs, quite a lot of jewelry, to Chinese, English and French furniture.
Robbery
In their 12 years of being in business, traveling to shows around the country, the Vogels had never had any trouble, no thefts, no losses, says Andrew, president of Wellesley House (although at home he’s more humorously known as Director of Transportation and Breakage). So you can imagine his shock when he woke on the morning of January 23rd, looked out the window of the hotel at the trailer as he did every morning, and noticed that the trailer was not there. Put yourself in his shoes. As much as $1 million worth of high end English antiques, their stock in trade and livelihood, all gone.
The police were a long time in coming, but when they finally arrived it was detectives, not patrolmen, so the wait was worth it. Soon the initial paperwork was done and the word was out. Fortunately, the Vogels had digital photos of just about everything that was stolen (you can see them here, courtesy of GoAntiques.com, http://info.goantiques.com/emails/announcements/012407/stolen_antiques/).
“The digital photos are crucial,” says Andrew. “If you have anything of value these days, you really need to have these photographs. Is it going to prevent loss? No. But it may be the ticket to reacquiring lost or stolen items. We had taken photos at the end of the show just before we began the pack-up process so we had up-to-the-minute photos of exactly what was in our booth and therefore exactly what was in the trailer so it gave the police and the public a little better idea of what was there. It gave us a leg up so we weren’t then guessing about what was in the trailer which often happens in the panic. We have an absolute catalogue of what was there.”
The media got onto the story very quickly and by the following morning the local newspaper was running it. In the evening, the antique theft was the lead story at 5 o’clock, 6, 7, 10 and 11 that evening. They held a news conference and the Vogels were able to disseminate a great deal of information and many photos to the media.
As mentioned, Andrew quickly alerted GoAntiques to the theft. “As soon as we were finished with the police on the Tuesday afternoon, we got right on the phone with our good friends and colleagues at GoAntiques.com (http://www.goantiques.com/),” he says. “We’ve been with Jim and Kathy Kamnikar since 1996 when they began what was at the time called Antique Networking which was later changed to Go Antiques. We got to Jim and Kathy right away and explained what had happened and sent the digital photos on to them and they created a section on their front page that became the theft alert that day, so that by early evening the pieces were up.”
As a result of the media coverage, the trailer was soon reported as having been sighted a couple of blocks away from where the show had been. The thieves had failed to break the locks and had finally gotten into the trailer by taking a 6-8” grinding wheel to the latch part of the door. They had taken specific items and left others. “As the police said, it was as if they had been given a shopping list and told exactly what to take by someone who knew exactly what was in the trailer,” says Andrew. They took the items that were on display at the Wellesley House booths in the hotel and left the items that had been kept on the trailer as back-up items. Someone had staked out the booth and its contents pretty carefully, maybe even photographed the items ahead of the robbery.
This was no amateur burglary. It was a planned, educated robbery.
“The people who did this were not only skilled in recognizing the antiques and going after exactly what they were looking for, but they also left my showcases in the trailer and they didn’t destroy anything,” says Andrew. “They had to remove at least two or three of the showcases to access the rest of the inventory. They did that and then they put all the showcases back. They put back all the support blocks and ratchet straps and other items needed for shipping. More than that, they put back the blocks of wood and so forth that I use to support the cases while I travel, very neatly: they were all just lined up in a row and stacked up. The whole thing was quite surreal. Very professional – which is very dangerous for everybody in this industry,” Andrew concludes.
Double Felony – FBI and Regulated Items
The FBI have been brought into the picture because among the stolen goods were many tortoiseshell items. This means that the thieves, and anyone buying the stolen goods, are committing a double felony: first is the theft and dealing in stolen goods; but the other part centers on the tortoiseshell items. Andrew explains: “We had about 40 items that were tortoiseshell and because tortoiseshell is regulated by the US Fish and Wildlife (tortoises are an endangered species and tortoiseshell comes under the same category as ivory). Both ivory and tortoise shell require in England a special certificate to release those items by customs. Every piece we have has to have its own CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) certificate when it leaves England. And if one wishes to import these into the US one has to apply for and receive a special permit from the US Fish and Wildlife to do the importation. Anyone selling these items now, and the person buying these items from the thieves, are both committing double felonies. They’re dealing with stolen merchandise and they’re also dealing in regulated items. Without the power of the documentation, these items might as well be radioactive, because if the buyer or seller is caught without the paperwork, the US Fish and Wildlife people will be all over them.” This fact has brought the FBI into the picture which means greater assistance and resources in the recovery of the stolen merchandise.
Insurance
While Andrew is full of praises for the West Palm Beach Sheriff’s Department and the assistance he is getting from law enforcement agencies, and while he is maintaining a positive, proactive view towards the catastrophe and doing all in his power to recover the stolen property and put the perpetrators behind bars, he is somewhat bitter about the insurance side of things.
“Yes there is insurance but I find it’s never adequate when you have a loss like this,” he says. “Full coverage is prohibitively expensive and we just couldn’t afford the premium. We’ve been paying premiums for many years and of course never had a claim but here it is, a devastating loss, and we’re not covered nearly as well as we would like to be.”
Andrew sees that the Fine Art Registry system of tagging and registering items is a solution which should appeal to insurance companies who will see that the reduced risk of insuring items which are tagged and registered can result in affordable premiums.
Security
“Security is something that we’re all going to have to take a much closer look at,” says Andrew after this recent catastrophe where security was so obviously inadequate. “Not just the dealers themselves but the show organizers, managers, promoters will have to provide much more security. There are issues that need to be addressed. We need to provide security not only for the dealers but for the consumers. There is a lot to be lost if these issues are not resolved, because the alternative will be not to attend the shows at all and that would be very counterproductive for everyone involved.”
The robbery at West Palm Beach followed closely in the wake of well orchestrated break-ins to dealer vehicles in Miami two weekends before at a large national show.
Fine Art Registry
When the CEO of the Fine Art Registry, Theresa Franks, read about the theft on the Go Antiques website, she immediately got in touch with Kathy Kamnikar offering support. She is now working with Andrew to get the stolen items posted on the FAR website in the Stolen Art section. Anyone offered fine English antiques for sale will be able to check on the FAR website to see if they were stolen and could save themselves the double felony charges which the FBI and the West Palm Beach Sheriff’s Department will be keen to press if the pieces appear for sale or exchange hands.
To Andrew’s entreaty to make sure you have digital photos of your valuables could be added, “and tag and register them with FAR with full descriptions.” This will provide a permanent, secure record which can be accessed by law enforcement, insurance agents and collectors and buyers. It is also a strong deterrent to would be thieves because of the additional difficulty involved in fencing a FAR registered item.
Words to the wise
“The biggest thing for people to understand is it’s important not to be victims,” says Andrew, who dispels any despair by remaining active and doing things that can help recover the stolen property and put the thieves behind bars.
“You the ‘victim’ need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and be absolutely as proactive as you can and do everything you can to help the guys who are on the team, i.e. law enforcement,” he continues. “Prepare yourself ahead of time with digital photos and records.”
“Be prepared to do whatever it takes. Be prepared to publish whatever you have in the way of photos and descriptions as soon as possible.”
The Fine Art Registry tagging and registering process is ideal because the photos and a full description are all online and available when needed, and the Stolen or Lost Art or Collectibles report feature provides a central place where stolen items are reported and posted instantly for anyone to access.
“And don’t give up,” he adds. “Because nobody is going to look harder for your stuff than you.”
Contact information
If you have any information about the crime or the stolen items, please contact one of the following:
• Andrew and Kelly Vogel (847) 417 6648
• Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office: (561) 688 3400
• Crime Stoppers: 1-800-458-TIPS
• Go Antiques: , (614) 923 4260
http://info.goantiques.com/emails/announcements/012407/stolen_antiques/
• Fine Art Registry: , 1-888-595-2787
www.FineArtRegistry.com
— David Phillips | February 1, 2007
Comments:
The views and opinions of individual authors/contributors expressed on the FAR® web site do not necessarily state or reflect those views and/or opinions of Fine Art Registry® or its agents or subsidiaries.
© 2006-2010 Global Fine Art Registry, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without express permission.
Fine Art News Feed
View all Articles
WHAT ELSE IS NEW WHEN IT COMES TO INSURANCE COMPANYS. THEY TAKE AND TAKE BUT WHEN IT COMES TO A PAY OUT THEY NEVER SEEM TO EVER GET THAT RIGHT. YOU CAN PAY FOR YOUR ENTIRE LIFE AND WHEN IT COMES TO A CLAIM THEY NEVER WANT TO PART WITH THEIR MONEY. I HATE THE INS. COMPANYS AND IF I EVER GET A CHANCE TO MAKE THEM PAY FOR ALL THEIR WRONG DOINGS, I WILL. I am very sorry for your loss.
Robert
February 14, 2007