Gentlemen,I'm just getting back on the computer after buying & remodeling a house we purchased back in January. I wanted to warn the people on this site to be very careful when dealing with a "reputable" knife dealer named Jeff Stover of Collector's Gallery in Alpine Village, Calif.
I have about 300 or so knives that I wanted to sell to help pay for a new kitchen and other house stuff, I was speaking to Ralph Freer who's a great guy and he recommended Jeff. He told me that Jeff Stover was a standup guy and someone who did alot of shows around the country, so I called Jeff, then met him at his store in Alpine Village, Ca.
I took 60 or so knives with me for him to evaluate to see what would be a fair price for both of us to make money and he told me that he tacks on 20%. No problem and everyone needs to make a living. We came to an agreement on prices, he promised that if something sold, he would send me off a check immediately. I was impressed enough with him so I left 50+ custom & rarer production knives with him to sell in his store and at shows. After a couple of months I called him and was called right back, but nothing had sold. Ok.....it was a slow time of the year and it's not his fault that people weren't buying. Another couple of months goes by and I call him again. This time he took a week to get back to me because he was on the road, ok, again, no problem. Jeff tells me that a customer put a $100 deposit on a one of a kind Ralph Freer bowie that I had given to Jeff and Jeff tells me that he'll pay it off in a month or so.
Well months go by because I'm busy and I don't want to be a pain in the a$$ when he's trying to run a business. I'm calling Jeff, he's either never in his store, he's not answering his phone or he's avoiding my calls, so now I'm getting a little apprehensive about this deal. I go into his store to have a face to face and he tell's me that this guy still hasn't paid off the Freer knife and that none of the other knives have sold. Well I know for a fact that the prices we put on these knives were cheap and we were no where near retail for discontinued production or custom stuff.
In any event, I tell Jeff to give me back my knives which he does about a month later, but the Freer custom isn't there and neither is another knife that I was going to net $225 from. Now I had trusted Jeff with $10-12 thousand dollars of knives and for months he couldn't be bothered to return any of my calls. A couple of months later after I called him 6-8 times, he finally sent me a $700 check for the custom Freer that he sold for double, not 20% over what we agreed to. Then I kept asking him about the other knife that he didn't return to me with my others and for 2 months he never returned my calls. Finally I was so pissed off at him that I called the number on his check which was his mother's house. Apparently he's living with his mother and when I explained the situation to her, I finally got my check for $225.
Long story short, be VERY WARY when dealing with this guy because I think he was trying to rip me off and keep my knives without paying me. He likes to play the big man and Mr. Knowitall when dealing with knives but I don't think he's trustworthy and had I not spoken to his mother, I would have never gotten my money or my knives back. The worst part is that he returned some NIB Rooster horn handle folding knives with broken handles, so it's just more proof that Jeff doesn't know what he's doing.
Ray
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