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Automotive Lifestyle
AUTOS: Kruse Auction Up For Sale
Owner Dean Kruse tells newspaper that he is considering offers for troubled auction business.
Bob Golfen  |  Posted May 14, 2010   Auburn, IN
Kruse International has been conducting collector-car auctions since the early 1970s. (Logo: Kruse International)
The Kruse International Collector Car Auction has been put up for sale, the latest chapter in the collapse of the once-great car-auction empire.

Dean Kruse, the founder and owner of the Auburn, Ind., auction house, said this week that he was considering several offers to buy the Kruse International name and assets, according to a report in the DeKalb Star, the auction’s hometown newspaper.

Company founder and owner Dean Kruse is a familiar sight on the auctioneer's podium of his collector-car auctions. (Photo: Kruse International)
Kruse has been slipping under the surface for several years, besieged by financial setbacks, complaints from scores of allegedly unpaid consigners and a daunting number of lawsuits. Recent auctions have been sham affairs, and instead of its usual website listings of dozens of upcoming auctions, current visitors will find a terse message that reads: “Kruse International has no current auctions scheduled at this time.”

Kruse last held a collector-car auction March 13.

The upcoming Auburn auction, Kruse’s signature event, is being handled by something called Auburn Auctions LLC, although detractors call it a “shell company” designed by Kruse to sidestep myriad legal issues.

Hemmings Motor News, the “bible” of car collectors nationwide, reported the impending demise of Kruse in a recent report.

“While out of professional courtesy we at Hemmings Motor News have had an informal moratorium on reporting on the decline and fall of Kruse Auctions over the last two years, but internally, we've had a Death Watch running,” Hemmings reported. “That clock hit zero hour on Wednesday, when Dean Kruse told the DeKalb Star the Kruse International name was for sale.”

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