Complaint Review: Julien's Auctions - Culver City California

I like the Auction process, and I like memorabilia so this would make me prime target audience for a site like Julien's Auctions. But as far as I can tell Darren Julien doesn't seem to care about customers. When I questioned a purchase I made, he called me an A*S (He's very fond of all caps) and told one of his flunkies to ban me from the site. You  would have thought I would have had to at least call him a name to receive that type of treatment but I didn't have to try that hard.

I purchased Print Of a Dr. Seuss drawing supposedly signed. The true draw to this piece of artwork for me was that is was supposedly from the estate of Frank Zappa. If the Dr. Seuss signature is authentic I didn't get ripped off too bad, but I still have no way of verifying if it it truly from Frank Zappa's estate, because It arrived very non ceremoniously in a cardboard box with NO Documentation whatsoever. There was no certificate of authenticity, no CDA, no Hologram, No letter saying "Thank you for purchasing this one of a kind Dr. Seuss....." there was not even a packing slip in the box. Come to think of it, I am pretty sure that they didn't even bother to put a return address on the box.

I assumed this was an oversight and contacted Julien's auction's to see if they could provide me with ANY PROOF of PROVENANCE for this item. (I'm using all caps a lot because I know how much Mr. Julien like them.) To my surprise Darren Julien himself replied, and what started out as a very civil exchange via email, degenerated into him being evasive, and then claiming that my proof of provenance is that "EVERYONE KNOWS" (he used all caps for that) that this piece came from the Zappa Estate and that they don't need to provide any proof that it did.

I want to be clear this is a very unremarkable piece of artwork, not an original, and the real draw is who owned it. But as it remains, I could have easily gotten it from a garage sale and claimed the same thing, without some chain of custody is just what it appears to be, a Dr. Seuss print, no more. And because the ugly pine frame also is part of the allure of it being owned by Frank Zappa I would not damage the frame to inspect if the Dr. Seuss signature is even real. So I'm lucky, I didn't spend too much and I got something that may be able to be appraised on it's own. But It would not surprise me to learn that Darren Julien has a warehouse full of absolute crap that he is attributing to "celebrity owned" and putting up for auction. 

Why not if he doesn't have to provide any proof. Honestly most of the stuff on his site is such s**+*ty merchandise that its only value it that it was owned by a famous person. Recently, I was looking at something that may (or may not) have been owned by Jimi Hendrix but anyone who spends 8-10K on a piece of costume jewelry with out knowing anything about it deserves to be SCAMMED. It does not surprise me that he has been accused of selling over 1.8 million dollars in FAKE Michael Jackson crap. And I also read that he stole some Memorabilia from a collector, but I really don't care anymore.

I am writing this as closure. Do not buy from this site unless you really don't care if you can prove where the item came from. Ask your questions before you buy. And really..what do you want with Moon Zappa's old clothes anyway. Honestly I was really surprised at how much absolute trash is supposed to have been owned by people with money. Makes you think about whether it could even be real. All the good stuff goes to the big auction houses, don’t trust Darren Julien. If you question him he becomes petulant, and you know what they say about people who overly protest to deflect the argument. They are full of *IT!