A Floridian widow is demanding that a Manhattan auction house return her husband’s stamp collection, which is reportedly worth up to $2 million.
Shelley Entner wants the collection back because she claims some stamps are missing.
Her late husband, Stanley Marks, started collecting stamps in 1937, when he was just 16 years old, the New York Post reports. He continued amassing the stamps until his death in 2016 at the age of 89. The collection was then turned over to Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, which describes itself as the “world’s leading auctioneer of US and worldwide stamps” on its website.
The collection was divided into US and international stamps, and the auction house sold the latter portion in 2016 for $750,000, Entner said in court papers filed by the Stanley A. Marks Revocable Trust. However, when Entner and her son William went to check up on the stamps in New York in April, they said some were missing.
“At an on-site visit, Ms. Entner came to believe that some of the stamps that had been in the US collection at the time of consignment were no longer there,” court papers cited by the Post read.
As a result, the family demanded that the auction house returns the stamps, but said it refused to do so. Entner then claimed Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries told her to reimburse it to the tune of $56,000 for insuring the collection—and release it from liability against any claims.
Her lawyer, Wendy Linstrom, told ARTnews: “Without legal basis, Siegel Auctions is refusing to release our client’s valuable American stamp collection unless she pays them a hefty sum. It is unconscionable that they are now holding the stamps for ransom!”
Entner is seeking a minimum of $2 million in damages.
Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries has publicly denied the accusations and called the lawsuit “entirely baseless.” ARTnews wrote to the auction house for comment. Daniel H. Weiner, a lawyer for the house said: “Regrettably, the lawsuit you mention below omits four crucial facts: (1) Ms. Entner, the sole trustee of her deceased husband’s trust, repeatedly told Siegel that she intended to use Siegel to publicly auction the stamp collection; (2) recently, Ms. Entner abruptly changed her mind and demanded Siegel give her that collection; (3) Ms. Entner refuses to reimburse Siegel for $56K in costs it incurred in insuring that collection at her request for the past nine years that it has held the collection in safe-keeping at her specific request; and (4) Siegel has repeatedly offered to return the collection to Ms. Entner.”
He added: “There is absolutely no validity to Ms. Entner’s allegation that stamps are missing from the trust’s collection, which she apparently makes in an improper attempt to use the court system to hurt Siegel’s reputation.”
Weiner said Entner and her son reviewed the collection in April. “Not only did they confirm that all the stamps were there, they expressed their gratitude in text messages to Mr Trepel [the auction house’s president] for the extensive time he spent with them,” he added.
