A Millionaire's Table

Last week I was assigned to cover an estate sale.

The man died and his family was selling everything.

My photographer and I showed up at the house, walked in, and quickly realized this was no ordinary sale.

No...the owner of this home had been a senior VP of Sony Music...and you could tell!

Andrew Piretti lived in New York but kept a house in Richmond and after he retired, he moved here for good.

He never married, lived alone, and enjoyed collecting unique and expensive stuff.  He owned well over 5000 CD's and most were still in brand new packaging.

Most of his third floor was filled with musical memorabilia.  He had met every artist that ever worked with Sony and had an autographed photo or poster to prove it.

Among personalized notes from U.S. Presidents, photos with Pope's, a $50,000 piece of artwork, and $700 shower curtains, the most sought-after items were in Piretti's Michael Jackson collection.

An original Michael Jackson jacket from his "BAD" tour.

The auction company told me that a woman from Paris wanted the Jackson stuff so bad she called 18 times to make sure it would be hers!

A few days later, Erica and I went back to see what was left in the house.

We were surprised that the dining room table and chairs were still there.  The owner probably paid at least $10,000 and you could tell.  The table had drawers under each place setting for silverware and each wooden chair was uniquely carved with a hand-stitched seat cushion.

This photo doesn't do the table justice...but it's the only photo we have.

The auctioner was asking $2400 for the table and chairs (not bad) but told us he'd sell it to us for $1000.  WOW!

As tempting as the offer was, we don't really need a new table right now so we said no. 

On the way out, Erica dropped a silent bid of $500 into the bucket.  We knew we it didn't stand a chance but we figured we'd give it a shot.

A few hours later, out of the blue, the auctioner called and said our bid had been accepted!

WHAT?  Seriously?  A fancy table with 8 chairs for $500?  

Wow.

The auctioner told us we had to pick up the table the next day (Sunday) so we frantically called around to find a truck.

Our good buddy Daniel came to the rescue and we agreed to meet up the next day.

That night we cleaned the house, moved our old table into another room, and started making plans to sell it on Craigslist.

The next day, as we were getting ready for church, the auctioner called Erica.  

"Your offer was for the table upstairs on the third floor, right?"

Uh...no.  That table - the white plastic set - was not worth anywhere near $500.

The auctioner responded, "We're asking $2400 for the dining room set.  $500 is not an acceptable offer.  Have a good day."

Gee...thanks.

Our dreams of getting a fancy dining room table and chairs from the former VP of Sony Music were dashed. 

Ah well.  We did end up with about 30 of his CD's.  They're for sale on Amazon right now.  Wanna buy one?

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