File puptcrit/puptcrit.0905, message 98


Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 10:30:10 -0600
From: Steve Millward <millwarden-AT-gmail.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Sky Highchief marionettes on e-bay to May 10.


On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Alan Cook <alangregorycook-AT-msn.com> wrote:

> 5 mariionettes have been offered for sale on e-bay, which rightly should
> not be on the market. (Three other puppets including "Jimmy Durante" have
> not been listed).
>
> At least 5 or 6 puppetry colleagues of mine are aware of this situation at
> this moment.
>
> The seller describes the items thusly:
>
> "collected from various professional theaters", which MAY be intentionally
> misleading since 6 puppets are completely Sky Highchief marionettes, and two
> were cobbled by and completed by Pady Blackwood from Highchief puppet parts.
>
> The Highchief marionettes have mannequin rubber heads and are on the heavy
> side as marionettes go.
>
> These figures were willed to Pady Blackwood by Sky Highchief. I can
> personally attest to the accuracy of this statement. Many other puppeteers
> in the Los Angeles area where Sky Highchief lived, also know about this.
>
> Pady was involved with a puppet theater in Dallas, so these marionettes
> were in Dallas when John Hopkins apparently removed them and sold these 5
> plus two more of them (8 all together).
>
> They did not belong to John Hopkins.
>
> I'm told that a police report was filed. I have no details of this. I do
> know that most puppeteers do not have the financial means to hire lawyers
> for extended periods of time. That seems to be the case here.
>
 (clipped)

Hi Alan,     There was no way on the ebay page to ask the seller a question,
but I did report it to ebay as being suspected stolen property.  In
response, they sent me the following:

Dear eBay Member,

Thank you for reporting this item.

If you see an item on eBay that you think may be stolen, please contact
law enforcement immediately. Tell the police officer handling the case
that we will be pleased to cooperate in the investigation.

Please forward this message to the officer and ask him or her to contact
us as follows:

1. Go to:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index_selection.html

2. Select "Listing Violations," and then click the "Continue" button.
3. Select "Stolen property," select "You are a law enforcement
official," and then click the "Continue" button.
4. Click the "Email us" link.

Thanks again for your report.

Sincerely,

eBay Customer Support

Original Message Follows:
-------------------------

Form Message: %344233% 060704
D_ID050820092340D_ID/W_ID171524886W_ID/S_ID0S_ID
Subject: VE=C00160 You suspect stolen property is for sale on eBay [#US
100771T US 100880B ?01 -01]
User Feedback: 19
User State: 01
Browser info: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; en)
AppleWebKit/525.27.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.27.1

Listing Violations > Stolen property > You suspect stolen property is
for sale on eBay
Item Numbers(s):
260391695326 880100B  $US
Message: These figures were willed to Pady Blackwood by Sky Highchief,
but were stolen by John Hopkins.

Maybe some of those of you closer to the case can take it from here as per
ebays instructions.

Steve Millward
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