Complaint Review: Mary Jea Lamperti MJL Estate Sales

 as i surfed the web looking for art to buy i came across mary jean lamperti's website and i fell in love with a painting she had on consignment by Andre Hambourg.  This artist had been represented by wally findlay galleries  and is very sought after so i assumed i wouldnt be able to afford the painting.  i had already tried to by a similar work  from an estate sale and that painting had a whole sale price off $26,000 which was simply to high for me if i had intentions to resell it.  Mary's painting was  just like the one i just discussed and i considered them to be   major works and they were also quite large which is unique for this artist who normally paintied works measuring 10 x 12 inches.  So I could only assume her asking price was also around $25000 so i didnt call at first.  a month went by and i couldnt get that painting at of my head so i decided to email her, but had she not replied i would have been just fine with living my life with that painting.   I just recieved a notice on my door that my home was to be auctioned so the last thing i needed was to buy a pricy painting in the hopes of selling it  and then ending up stuck with it for months and months.   instead of emailing back she called me and we had a lovely conversation which led me to believe that i would have many future dealings with her.

So the painting ended up being $5000 which was an awesome deal but at more and more i was having financial problems at home like my house being robbed and then my car and to make things worse this all happened when i was out of town and by the time i returned the impound lot that towed my range rover after some addict was arrested driving it ended up selling it at auction with out any notice.    the car i had paid close to  $90,000 for had been conveniatly sold for $9,000 at some auction held in thier yard to a fellow tow truck driver.   right before my father was going to drive me to get my car i received a call from this driver asking if i had extra keys to my rover.   once he bought the car he opened the glove compartment and found the registration which happened to have my my name on it which is close enough to my dads name or this dirvers dentist.  yes, my dad is his dentist so he called.  thats how i discovered that.  had the drug addict kept my car for another week or two i would still have my car today.  added to that is i had to bus it to every pawn shop in the pacific northwest in search of all the jewlery and sterling stolen from my home. so buying the hambourg became more distant by the day and i new she had an open house coming soon and i knew that some dealer from new york city would  attend and buy it for sure.

well i was shocked when she emailed me after the sale to inform me she still had it.  so i made and offer that went no where and i made another offer for a little over $4000.   luckily she gave me some time to come up with the money becuase she needed a day to get back to me becuase she wasnt sure the consignor would take the offer.  so like a gigantic putz i went to a pawn shop with my collection of ancient 24kt gold greco roman jewelry and turned in almost $100,000 worth of antiquity for a grand total of $6000.  I knew i would come back for them so it really didnt matter but believe me i tried t get the most i could.  i brought it museum catalogs where these peices had been published and i even brought in the christies catalog where  i sold two of the necklaces, one for $10,000 and the other for $26000.  so the pawn shop gave me $6000 for almost ten of the necklaces.    So she gets back to me the next day to let me know we have a deal and immidiately go to the back to get a cashiers check and on the next day i mailed the check to her.

 a few days later i called mary to let her know that she should watch out for the mail tomorrow becuase the check wwas to arrive.  well that didnt matter becuase she didnt answer but sent me an emailed respose with no apology but a short note that went someting like this " did you know? the hambour was sold already and i had no idea.  i guess the consignor gave the painting to her daughter and her daughter sold it to someone and the consignor had no idea when she said yes to me".

right then and thier i dint just lose a painting but i can almost guarantee you 100% i  lost atleast $10,000 which is what i would have made after selling it for $15000 if not more.    the whole time we discussed doing business we also discussed one part of doing business which is shipping and i understood clealry that the painting was in Marys possessin and that i would have a ups store come and pick it up from her to ship it or anything else i would buy from mary. now, i was to belived mary had an estate sale days before and suddenly that painting had left her and went back to the consignor and then it left the consignor and went to the consignors daughter??

ill tell you what really happened.  she sold me the painting and then called me a million times probably worried she wasnt goign to get paid so then someone else made an offer who was present or near by and she chose to screw me and sell it to that person and not wait for my check to arrive becuase one again all her calls lead me to believe she was concerned about not getting paid.  thier is also a chance someone offered her more money to cancel our agreement becuase believe me thier was plenty of room for a dealer to make a much higher offer.

i would have much rather of had her tell me form the get go she didnt want to deal with someone from out of state or she could have given me her bank account info and i could have walked into chase or bank of america here in seattle and deposited the funds so she would have received them that exact same day.  but she didnt want to give someo stranger her bank account info.  it really just kills me when someone is so worried about being screwed / ripped off and in the end they screw the person they were worried about.  she knows that i had though about buying this painting for over a month so thier was alot of thinking and searching and plainning involved and in the end she couldn't even say sorry or tell me she would make it up  to me.

atleast once  a week i search for that painting in the hopes that i find it for sale at auction or a gallery just so i could make one last effort to take it back because i know that painting was mine and although the funds had not been deposited into her account yet its easy to understand that even mary belived that painting to be mine or else she would not of had to make up such an excuse to get out of this whole mess,.

i even waisted money to ship the check and im also  stuck haveing to pay the pawnshop almost 30% interest on the loan they gave me.  maybe these arent very large amounts but i can tell you that im typing this report at my folks house becuase i no longer have a home of my own which l lost two months ago. so every small amount at that time and as of today is not that small for me these days.   what worrieds me most is i see this as all signs to the decline of america whcih scares the s**t out of me.  so many people these days just cant keep thier word or make a deal thats unbreakable with a simple hand shake.  so many people can care less about hurting thier fellow man and its becoming a world full of people that only care for themselves.  mary should really be ashamed of herself and if their is even a 1% chance their is something true to her story than i really would have loved to have spoken to the daughter and the collector she sold the painting to?