This review is based on my personal experience, the personal experience of another consignor who I spoke with extensively, and other reviews on the Internet.
Mark Bastian, Owner and CEO of Charleston Estate Auctions, is advertising a service he is unable to provide. He presents as a sweet and charming guy with 10+ years experience in antiques and auctions. He stated that he has a nationwide mailing list with which to market his monthly online auctions. Said he has an experienced appraiser on board, professional photography, and all the tools for in house shipping. A well oiled machine, yes? Far from.
I found out way too late that although Mark's SC State Auctioneer's license is printed on his business cards, he does not hold a current license. LLR could not tell me why his license is longer active, but it's not hard to guess.
What is hard is trying to understand what Mark's objective is in taking people's estate items, making inflated claims about their value and his ability to sell them, flat out lying about the regularity of the auctions, stringing people along with false promises, and following all of that up with a consistent pattern of ghosting the consignor on all methods of communication.
I don't know exactly what Mark's damage is but it's hard not to resent him for bringing other people into it. He is robbing people of a tremendous amount of time, physical energy, emotional energy and the opportunity to sell the stuff elsewhere. The one "good thing" in all of this is that I was able (with the support of a police escort) to retrieve my things.
Mark may have been able to pull this off at some point in his life, but I would not recommend doing business with him now. Lies come easily to him and he seems quite committed to the bit. I have a lot of regard for human frailty, but this is next level. Unprofessional at best and disturbed to the point of fraudulent at worst. I hope Mark gets the help he needs and is able to be honest with himself and others and stop causing harm. Let this be a wake up call to him to either get his shit together or shut down his business and find another line of work before he winds up in a much worse situation than he is in now. read more