I recall selling a bunch of coastal cats to him when I was just a kid, the bottom had fell out of the market, but he was still buying when a bunch of the other buyers had closed their doors. He had me help pack the hides back into his cold storage after he bought them and he had tons of cats hanging there. He told me he had five years worth of cats in cold storage at the time waiting for the market to come back up, he said he was selling on the lower priced ones he was buying then but was holding on to the older ones he had paid high prices for because he had the storage and wasn't selling them at a loss. He paid pretty good on beaver and otter at times also.
Like the majority of furbuyers, you better know what you had, because if he knew you didn't know what your fur was worth he would lowball you. But he was THE big buyer in the Pacific Northwest that everybody compared the other buyers prices to. Kind of like Groenwold for you easterners today, if someone sold their furs to a buyer, everyone commented on whether the price they got was better or worse than Goldberg would have given them.
I'll tell a story on a buyer of his that we used to sell furs to. He eventually went out on his own, but at the time of this story he was buying for Goldberg. I was probably seven or eight at the time this happened. Dick would look through your furs and always pick out one or two and say, "if they were all just like these." And offer you a high price for those couple furs, and buy the rest at a much reduced price. Of course he was figuring an average in his head, but the trappers/hunters would leave saying, "he gave me X dollars for two cats!" My dad had a bunch of cats (30-40) and he had Dick come to the house and look through them, sure enough there were a couple that, "if they were all just like these". Dad sold him the couple high dollar cats and kept the rest. He sent my mom to his place later with those same cats (Dick didn't know she was his wife), and sure enough there were a couple of good ones in there again. He sent those cats with my grandpa, and with a friend, all told Dick looked those same cats over four times, and every time he found a couple of "if they were all like these" cats in there. Dad kept selling him those couple high dollar ones and holding the rest, and finally sent the rest up to Goldberg himself. Who bought the leftovers for about what the average would have been the first time Dad showed them to Dick if he would have sold all of them to him.
Finally around midnight the full moon came up giving enough light on the river for a take off. Norm was still down on his knees shuffling skins and practically crying because I was holding out for about 40 cents per hide more. I think I had about 160 marten. 
