Has anyone heard any updates on the Fur Harvesters accounts? It's getting pretty close to shipping time for me and I'm kind of weary.

Ah.....ye of little faith!

I just hate not being able to see what's happening! Lol

Bump

BOCO says get with the program and don't worry !!


w

he said the same about NAFA

Jim Gibb said that NAFA was good to go as well !!

w

Your a middleman,you obviously dont like a trappers shipping to the auction house cause it cuts out guys like you.
I trap and sell at the auction,no need for me to support a middleman.

That charges you and the buyer a commission, so not much difference.

As a Wild Fur Shipper's Council member,
I was a part owner of NAFA.

We had millions in the bank and Herman Jansen
kept close watch over the financial well being of
our auction house.

What could go wrong with a setup like that !!!

w

That charges you and the buyer a commission, so not much difference.[/quote]



Big difference.
Trappers get more money when their fur is intersorted at the auction.Plus all the charges go back to run our auction house.Not going out the door to someone else.
And local buyers sell at the auctions-just look at the creditors list for the Nafa They are all there,lol.

boco news flash!!!!! NAFA is gone !!!!! along with alot of trappers money!!!!

And a lot of middlemens money too.
I never lost a cent there and made a ton of money for years before they went belly up.
Their problem was they were in bed with the ranchers who sunk them.

FHA is a trappers auction house.

So what happened with NAFA anyway? Only been trapping 3/4 of a year and just know there was tension with FHA and some guy took off and bought an island in the Caribbean?…trappers lost everything they brought in?

I called Greg Schroeder, the US shipping and receiving warehouse for FHA in Wisconsin last week regarding the lack of account access for the last several months. He assured me that everything will be "worked out and completed in the next few weeks". He said they are still working on a software update and "re scanning" items into accounts. But I'm with you, it's been going on way too long and doesn't instill a lot of confidence going into the shipping season.

Nafa sold ranch fur mainly.
NAFA lent out 10's of millions of dollars to mink ranchers to expand their buisnesses when fur prices skyrocketed.
The ranchers agreed to sell all their mink thru NAFA as part of the loan agreement yo pay back the loans.
The ranchers expanded production-flooded the market with near 100 million ranch mink skins.
This stupid move depressed the entire fur market for going on a decade,bankrupting themselves and NAFA too when they couldnt rcover the loans.

Greedy fur ranchers destroyed NAFA and the fur market.

FHA survived because they are a trappers auction house,and solid not greedy.
Instead of lending out money to shysters in the good years they put it back into the company for the lean years as directed to do by the trappers.

I dont know any trappers around here that never got paid for the fur they had at NAFA ,myself included.
A bunch of buyers and dealers that sold fur at NAFA lost their shorts apparently.

I had a cheque bounce, which I had to pay the service fee for and was never reimbursed for either. Plus had a half dozen ( the best ones ) marten that I never got paid for!

NAFA was controlled and owned by the ranch fur industry, mostly the mink farmers. The mink farmers started making poor business decisions when the mink market collapsed. NAFA was expanding their ranch mink business while the market for the product was collapsing. Eventually NAFA's bank bailed on them. They declared the equivalent of a American Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They owe many wild fur shippers and some mink ranchers money. They have been selling off their assets to pay back their secured creditors. If they have any money left after paying the secured creditors ( mostly banks) then they may pay off the shippers and mink farmers. NAFA may come back as a Chinese owned ranch and/or wild fur auction company. Time will tell.

Not true,all the trappers who had fur there that I know(and I know a few hunderd in my district)all got paid.It took a bit longer than normal but they still got what their fur sold for.

Individuals Payables Over $1,000.00 ...................................13,983,988
Trade Payables & Other Liabilites Under $1,000.00............... 837,532

Nope, everybody here got paid for their fur,I know,I had marten there.
How much fur did you have there that you were not paid for?

I have to side with BOCO on this one. I have always done better at FHA than I ever did at local auctions or middlemen fur buyers. I hope FHA can stay in business. The last thing trappers need is to lose a direct connection with global fur markets.

The fur they gave away after the chapter 11 people got paid for by the monitor. The rubber check before chapter 11, I don't believe so. Those debts are not payable under the Chapter 11 until the secured creditors are paid.

NAFA did not make all their bad checks good and they did not pay all the people for fur that was left in their hands that was unsold. My brother still has the bad check and the last time I looked, his account still shows a balance due of 20 or 30 dollars. No big deal, they treated us pretty good over the years. I just looked at our NAFA account- $22 still owed to us.

I had a check bounce, about $125 including fee from bank.

Everybody in my district that I know got paid.And so did I.
I only had 2 marten left over from the 60 or so plus a bunch of other fur I had on the previous sale and they sold for 40 a piece,10 dollars less than the avg at the previous sale,and they were high grade marten.

Dirt and others are correct. Checks that bounced were not honored as of yet. I’m out just under 400$ us. They still had about 180 reds of mine which sold afterwards under the Monitor… to Groenwold it appeared. They averaged about 4 dollars I believe. Was paid for those. NOT the previously owed credit from the bounced check.

I am also correct,not everyone who shipped did not get paid.
Lots got paid.

Sounds like people were paid for the furs sold after the bankruptcy but not for those sold before they declared it.

I can summerize this quickly............. Herrman Jansen!

Now BOCO, you must admit there was a time you supported NAFA, whole-heartedly.
I remember posting on here 2 years before the collapse that I was done with them due to the fact they were loaning money to ranchers to expand operations that were un-sustainable, and switched to FHA.
I was met with typical guffaws, because prices from the most recent auction were very good.
That was followed by "issues", and then a crash.

THIS!

We need to be careful and concerned as "trappers" are not much different then "ranchers" in many aspects. We have read a lot of posts over the years talking about how to get some types of set or assigned value for wild fur and that is not as far removed from advancing monies to expand a fur ranch as we may like to think.

Bryce

I had 1 mink and 1 fox there , and never got anything from them, so not everyone got paid

Friend of mine sent 5 cats to nafa and yes he got a bad check $35.00 bank fee. Second check was for $26.00. The bank wanted to change him a fee because it was a check on a Canadian bank. He just ate the loss so no not every one got their money. I saw the cats before he shipped them, they should have brought $1200 to $1500

None. I stop shipping to NAFA in 2014 after the March sale crap show. I left them some rebate money from 2014. I figured they were going to need it. Turns out It didn't help.

That is only because you refuse to know anybody who tells you they didn't get paid. I had a check bounce for a few thousand dollars, not only did I have to pay the fee for a bounced check that NAFA claimed they would pay back and never did. But they never paid the bounced checks. Now they did sell the rest of the fur I had sitting up there several years later, for about 10% of what it was valued at, at the time it was shipped. I did get paid for that, when they firesaled everything they had. But was never reimbursed for the bounced check, and those furs were sold first.
The very first thing they did was go to a judge and get a ruling that nobody could file suit against them for their money, or their furs back.

That being said, NAFA was much more user friendly and transparent in matters like grading and what furs sold and didn't. FHA routinely lies about the percentages of fur that is sold, and their numbers do not add up on anything else if you bother to do the math. I have sent furs to FHA at times, but have not been happy with them. On the other hand I sold with NAFA for fifteen or twenty years and was happy with them up until the time they went under and shorted me close to twenty thousand dollars.

International Auction houses are a good thing for trappers, unfortunately FHA has a very opaque business model and has proven to be untrustworthy in the past, so there is no reason to trust them blindly until they prove they have changed their practices.

From everything I have heard they provide much better service to Canadian and in particular Ontario trappers than they are with US shippers.

No you are not. On page one you said, "Not true,all the trappers who had fur there that I know(and I know a few hunderd in my district)all got paid.It took a bit longer than normal but they still got what their fur sold for." Now you claim you are correct because you say not everyone got paid, but lots did.

He will never admit he was wrong. Don't bother.

I'm not scared. I am thinking of sending FHA some fur this go round . I haven't sent anything in several years now. It would not be good for them to fold!

NAFA bounced one on me and I never got re-imbursed for it

My understanding after talking directly to Deloitte several times , was those with direct deposit, and the earliest to cash/deposit their checks got paid. Once NAFA's bank account was empty, the large majority of the mailed out checks bounced, and have NOT YET been paid. I don't know that it is very likely they will be paid, since all the secured creditors (banks) get the first shot at any money NAFA produces by selling assets. So essentially, NAFA sold the trappers fur, pocketed the money, and used it to pay down their debt to the secured creditors ( banks).
All the remaining fur sold at the final fire sale, for pennies on the dollar, was paid out to the trappers, and those checks did clear.
Speaking specifically for myself, I can tell you I had around 350 marten at NAFA that year, and got a rubber check, and bounced check fee to show for it. NAFA has never made good on their bounced check, YET....... I'm not holding my breath either!

All that fur dumped for cheap probably didnt help the market The Chinese children are probably still sewing up garments that they got at that fire sale.

I got my shipping tags today, so they still had $1.30 (CN) for that I'm sure it will be fine, just give em some time

Received my tags today also.

I haven't seen mine yet that's another thing I was concerned about

Got mine today too.

No you are not. On page one you said, "Not true,all the trappers who had fur there that I know(and I know a few hunderd in my district)all got paid.It took a bit longer than normal but they still got what their fur sold for." Now you claim you are correct because you say not everyone got paid, but lots did. [/quote]

He will never admit he was wrong. Don't bother. [/quote]

If you had half a brain you might remember the poster I was talking to ,shakeyjake, asked if all the trappers lost their money-NO THEY DID NOT!
I never claimed all the trappers from timbuktu or who knows where got paid I said all the trappers I know in my district myself included got paid.

BOCO, why is every post you have on this thread been edited?

I dont want to come across like coonman.

"They owe many wild fur shippers and some mink ranchers money. " I posted this.

and then "Not True..........."

I posted." Individuals Payables over $1000.00....... 13,383,98

" Trade Payables & Other Liabilities under $1000......837,532

and then" Nope............"

Must be my half a brain?

Exactly-my answer to shakeyjake went right over your head obviously.

Same here but its not much. Maybe Herman's yacht and the FTX boy-king's yacht (man, that kid had an ugly girlfriend!) will collide in the Bahamas and both will drown. That would be rich. Then again, I heard FTX boy-king just got charged for his crimes so Herman is still a couple steps ahead of him. Good ole Herman...

I love the "FHA is a trappers owned auction house". Yet they still profit on ranch fur too. Lol!

......we will need boco to confirm that!!!!!!!!!!!

They have one board seat out of 10 that is a rancher.
Far from a ranch fur house.
Why would trappers not want to profit from selling fur at our auction house?
If ranchers want to use a trappers auction house to sell fur no problem with me(or the board of directors).

Somebody needs to clear some stuff up for me, because I was under the impression that even before NAFA shut down the vast majority of trappers sent in their fur to the auction house for max profit. Are you saying that this isn't the norm and that trappers have some issue with FHA? I think the world of FHA and commend them for doing what they were able to to survive during COVID. I don't agree 100% with how they market North American Fur, but i say that as an outsider to the organization and an outsider to a good majority of the fur buyers with all fairness to FHA who does not have all the insight that they do. I think if fur was really high in value I would consider using one of the people that buy fur in the states, but it just doesn't seem like a worthwhile proposition from my seat. Maybe some who have used the auction house could speak up with bad experiences I would be curious as to hear them, and please I am looking for the average experience, one offs will happen everywhere.

Canadian trappers(Ontario specifically)-yes they established their auction house to cut out the middle man,and cut out the paternal take it or leave it attitude of the HBC(later NAFA) and get better prices for their fur.in the early to mid 50's
It was everything that the trappers had hoped for and even more.
A lot of northern trappers in the states,Especially Michigan,Minnesota,NY etc got on board and shipped(to OTA),and continue to ship (to FHA)lots of good fur.
Most American trappers kept selling to the middlemen because they either didnt want to put up fur,or didnt know how.

walleyed began selling at Ontario Trapper's Association auction
in 1976 before it morphed into FHA in the late 80's/early 90's.

Used to send my fur bag up by bus to North Bay, Ontario, Canada
through a custom broker agent office at the peace bridge in Buffalo.

This was back when Alex Sheiff was running the show at North Bay.

Auction prices were 30% to 50% better than what In-country buyers
were paying in upstate New York.

Heck, most of those in-country buyers were also shipping the
fur they bought from New York State trappers to the OTA auction.

Like BOCO says,
The Ontario Trapper's Association Auction cut out the middleman.

Good times and great prices during that late 70's/early 80's fur boom.

walleyed

A lot has change since the 1970's and 80's. During the recent coyote boom, I would bet no one, any place, sold as many coyotes for as high a average. as the NDFTA sales did. I don't mean one coyote, or one cherry picked lot, I mean across the board, what was offered. They were all bought by bad middle men who are out to make a profit.

.................and with a much lower selling commission, I might add.

The ND Fur Takers board wanted to put on a sale to put money in the trappers pocket. I would bet you can not find a fur sale that had a lower commission. Many charge the buyers also, like FHA does. NDFTA did not charge the buyers anything.

FHA also gets a significant quantity of southern fur, Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana. Where do you think a lot of the Central coyotes come from, and western beaver, they also used to sell a lot of "coat" coon.

Is North Dakota Fur Takers still having a sale this year?

" I have been employed in this business from the fur auction end since the early 1980s and as a trapper earlier yet. The first real crisis I personally witnessed in this business happened in the mid-1980s when the Ontario Trappers Association (OTA) went through a major shift in new directors being voted in at the annual trappers convention. Out of that the new board hired Price Waterhouse to develop a new management platform for the OTA fur sales service. When the dust settled, it saw Alex Shieff resign after 20 years at the helm as captain of a real success story, OTA, which he played a major role in building.

( Somewhere in this story I believe OTA auction went bankrupt?)

A multi-tiered management team was put in place with people being hired with no history in the trade. It was during this time of great unrest and turmoil that the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) formed Trappers International Marketing Service (TIMS) and set up a warehouse directly across the road from where Fur Harvesters Auction (FHA) remains today.

TIMS hired away many senior graders, managers and agents from OTA which made our situation even tougher. As well, at the time we were in a depressed market with prices and clearances at unhealthy levels. The end game of the subsidiary company TIMS was to put OTA out of business. As reported in the Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 11, 1986, when TIMS’s newly appointed GM, Ron Lancour (trapper ron), was asked by a reporter, “Why not set up the subsidiary in Toronto and leave North Bay the Association?” he replied, “If you’re going to be in competition, what better place is there to locate than next door?”

Goodbye TIMS and HBC

Well, that was 35 years ago and TIMS was a flash in the pan and was dead and gone in a few short years. Actually FHA bought most of their warehouse equipment as well, and I recall many of us here rolling carts and bins of equipment down the road from their warehouse to ours prior to TIMS closing down forever. Shortly after this, for the first time since HBC was incorporated in 1670, its name ceased to be associated with wholesale fur trading. While the Toronto location of the auction house remained the same, the name was changed to North American Fur Auctions (NAFA).

In the 1960s there were eight fur auctions in Canada: HBC, Dominion Fur Co., Soudack Fur Auctions, Edmonton Fur Auction Sales, Western Canadian Raw Fur Auction Sales, Canadian Fur Auction, Saskatchewan Fur Marketing Board and the OTA. Some were forced out of business but many were simply swallowed up by the HBC to become a subsidiary or affiliate forwarding agency for that corporation with all furs being auctioned in Toronto.

During the 1980s and up to 2005, Canada was home to three remaining auction houses. In 2005 the late great Ted Pappas, owner of Western Canadian Raw Fur Auction Sales, decided to hand his business over to FHA leaving only two companies standing.

During the past 35 years we have seen markets rise and fall and troubles come and go. As of last year, FHA is the last remaining fur auction company, not only in Canada, but in all of North America."

Mark Downey

(There is a new ranch mink fur auction company in the U.S. called AME)

I wish somebody somewhere would write a 20th century history (and now 21st) of the fur business in North America. Fascinating study to me. Maybe when Mark retires (hint, hint) I'd buy a dozen copies for friends.

Who is the last man standing(company) FHA. They may not be perfect. No business is, if you know anything about business that is obvious. But I think they try to do the best they can. The majority of trappers sold to and still sell to the middle man esp. in the US. For them its the right decision if they have small amounts of fur and do not want to work on getting the final profit. I remember a large buyer that had an issue with NAFA. He called them out on their business practices not to long before the shitn hit the fan. They banned him. Best thing that ever happened for him. He is still in business and they are gone!!!

I am no longer on the board, so I can not say 100%. I have heard second hand talk both ways.

A good book to read is the one by Ralph Bice entitled "Fur-The trade that put Upper Canada on the Map".
A lot of great history there from way back in the early days and how OTA fur sales came about.

Is that upper pic with the string of marten you Boco?

In my younger days,lol.

Yep NAFA made a bad business decision and cost them everything and also cost a lot of trappers money I was fortunate

One foot in the grave and the other on the banana peel would sum this industry up. Lingering post collapse.

Part of the great reset.

Were you the narrator in the old videos in the other topic about relocating beaver?….hahaha.
I’ll have to get some fur bags from Winnipeg. I’ve got an account set up over the phone but she said it’s not active until I drop stuff off. She said she’d mail me some bags & stuff but that was months ago. Wife works in the peg a couple days a week but I ain’t sending her to that area…..literally on the wrong/bad side of the tracks.

Do you think he knows about the history of the Seattle Fur Exchange or HE Goldberg?

I have wished that someone would interview Irwin (Goldberg) before it's too late. That interview would either need to be a book or a three part magazine article.

Dirt, that is so funny! I was just getting ready to post the same pic! Good one!

In Alaska they have what is called the Bushmailer. It is like a newspaper filled with mostly advertisements targeted to rural Alaska. H.E. Goldberg always had a full page ad listing his prices for tanned skins. I used these prices as a basis to price my own tanned skins. I don't think I was alone?