IAW has surfaced again, this time with background assets of the new Star Trek movie. I knew a month ago that Paramount was interested in selling these assets, which consist mostly of Narada, Kelvin and Starfleet Academy set pieces. Items that would not be reused in the next Star Trek movie. Supposedly Paramount was going to meet with all the auction houses and have a competitive situation for who would dispose of these and other Paramount assets. Sadly, on the first day at the San Diego Comic Con, I found out that Paramount had given them to IAW without any such competitive situation.
What makes this especially disappointing is that IAW had so badly mangled the sale of the Star Trek assets in the first place, that they are now being rewarded for this bad behavior. And while higher ups at CBS are clearly not happy with the shoddy way IAW disposed of the Star Trek assets, it seems that Paramount has no such misgivings.
From bad customer service, to the inability to get anyone with decision making power to return a call or email, to not delivering on items purchased on eBay, most every top Star Trek collector has a beef with IAW and yet we are now all once again subjected to having to deal with them.
I will be posting photos tomorrow of some of the items as IAW is at the Las Vegas Con and selling some of these assets. The only good news here, is that there aren't a lot of good pieces and nothing of what IAW brought is of any interest to the collectors who have so far seen them.
Alec