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Public to get first glimpse of Parish’s assets
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
The doors of Exhibition Hall B at the Charleston Area Convention Center opened at 1 p.m. today for a public preview of what at least one of the participants described as the largest auction of a single person’s property in memory.
“We’ve had large auctions in Charleston before, but in all my years in the business, going all the way back to 1972, this is by far the largest I have ever seen,” said auctioneer Ed Roumillat as workers continued to open crates and position items throughout the hall on Wednesday afternoon.
“When you look at all this,” he said, motioning to tables filled with gnomes, collector plates and scores of other items ranging from the bizarre to the mundane. “The scale of Al Parish’s acquisitions was amazing. And this still isn’t everything.
“Some of the more high-end items, like the silver, have been sent off to Sotheby’s, while much of the cartoon art is being sold through other parties in order to secure the best price for the receivership.”
About 4,500 items will be sold in about 2,000 lots during the two-day auction on Friday and Saturday, with many of the pricier items, namely watches and pens, being put on auction block first.
Parish has been charged by federal prosecutors with defrauding more than 500 investors of about $55 million in connection with a series of investment pools he operated as a sideline to his job as an economics professor at Charleston Southern University.
While Parish’s criminal trial is still several months away, his assets are being sold by order of the U.S. District Court in Charleston in connection with five additional civil charges filed against him in connection with the same investment pools.
This afternoon curious members of the public and those interested in registering to participate in the auction will also be able to purchase significantly discounted men’s and ladies’ wear in a tag sale of the remaining goods from the now defunct A.J. Davis Clothing store on King Street.
Everything from the store is being sold at 10% of its original retail value.
In the meantime, seating has been set up for a crowd of between 400 and 500 people, although the fire marshal has reportedly told the receiver that as many as 1,000 could be accommodated in the hall.
Although the preparations for the auction were orderly and highly organized, there was something about the seemingly endless array of items that gave the scene an air of chaos.
Every few steps brought another surprise: A Solaire infra-red backyard grill with refrigerator that Parish bought for $17,500, snake skin boots and shoes made of elephant hide, nutcrackers, collectible plates, exercise equipment, and even the former economist’s personal CD collection, which ranged from Simon and Garfunkle to the Spice Girls.
Among the most famous of the items on hand is the Mont Blanc pen that Parish purchased for $170,000. The pen is encrusted with 1,400 diamonds.
Standing near a bust of the late former Beatle John Lennon and a tabletop statue of a rocket ship, attorney J. David Dantzler, who is working with the court-appointed receiver Hays Financial Consulting of Atlanta, said while he has no idea how much the stuff will bring in, “if we raised $1 million with this auction, we’d think we hit a home run.
“We have always said this case would not be a happy ending for his investors, and as time goes on, we’re ever more certain of that. There’s still some real estate to sell, of course, but a lot of it has hefty mortgages attached to it, and while Dr. Parish did make several business investments, none are in very big companies. There’s not a Google in the batch.”
While the auction won’t come anywhere near raising an amount of money comparable to what investors lost, by the close of bidding on Saturday night it will have done something almost as significant from the point of view of the receivership—reducing the amount that has had to be paid to store all the stuff, Dantzler said.
“That in itself has been a tremendous expense and the faster we can bring those numbers down, the better it will be for everybody, including the investors,” he said.
The attorney went on to say that even though the auction is this weekend, proceeds won’t be distributed to investors for some time.
“There will likely be one distribution of proceeds from the receivership at the end of the case,” Dantzler said. “How long that will be, is anyone’s guess. It all depends on how long it takes to sell everything we can.”
As he supervised the opening of one crate after another, auctioneer Roumillat offered a few words of advice to potential bidders.
“Remember,” he said. “The bidder’s No. 1 secret weapon at an auction is knowledge.”
A daily admission fee of $5 will be charged today, Friday and Saturday. In addition, a non-refundable $20 fee will be charged to register as a bidder, but this fee will be applied to any purchases.
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