Need gnomes? Hendrix guitar? Auction has it all

Parish stuff soon will be going, going, gone!

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Al Parish Auction

Hundreds of items that belonged to Al Parish fill the North Charleston Convention Center Tuesday to be auctioned off this Friday.

If your foot is size 11, you might want to bid on Al Parish's pair of handcrafted rattlesnake skin cowboy boots.

Or if you have an extra $500,000 just sitting around, there's a Jimi Hendrix guitar begging to be taken home.

Thousands of Parish items, both personal and of collection-quality status, are filling up a spacious meeting hall inside the Charleston Area Convention Center ahead of Friday and Saturday's court-sanctioned auction.

The offerings include the kitschy and bland: Parish's coffee pot, his rusty garden tools, old magazines and monogrammed purple bath towels.

Other oddities include his garishly flashy sweaters, a state-of-the-art infrared grill, five plasma TVs, and an army of bearded gnomes.

Also up for grabs are much more-coveted items such as rare, jewel-encrusted pens, coins and guitars once owned by Hendrix and fellow rock legends George Harrison and Keith Richards.

The goal of the two-day sale is to return as much money as possible to nearly 600 investors the government contends were defrauded through Parish's unlicensed "hard-asset" pools. Although no target figure has been set by organizers, raising as much as $3 million to $5 million is not out of the question for the two days, they said. Investigators say as much as $54 million entrusted to Parish was lost.

And, while some members of the public might come away with garage-sale bargains on furniture, hand tools, compact discs, clothes and collectibles, some of Parish's investors who attend the sale might come away angry.

Many of the items, such as Garfield dinner plate sets or Red Skelton paintings Parish invested in, are of questionable worth.

"If I lost $10,000, I might come out here," said David Dantzler, an Atlanta attorney who is helping to collect and catalog Parish's assets. "If I'd lost $100,000, I might not," he added.

Parish, formerly an economics professor at Charleston Southern University, is free on $1 million bond awaiting trial on 11 federal fraud-related charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Progress on the auction came as a jury-selection date for his criminal trial was announced Tuesday, to be held next month.

Parish's attorney, Andy Savage, said it is not out of the ordinary to pick a federal jury far in advance of a trial.

But he added he might try to delay the selection, in part because the government is still in the process of developing its case and has not turned over case discovery. No trial date has been set. The jury selection date is Aug. 21.

For Friday's auction, organizers are hoping a large degree of local foot traffic will generate interest in the sale of the Parish memorabilia.

They also contend collectors nationwide have shown interest in some of Parish's more-valuable items, including artwork, rare coins, watches and the rock star guitars, which might be among the first items auctioned Friday.

Harrison's guitar was a gift to his child's nanny. Richards' guitar was pictured on the cover of the Rolling Stones' 1970 live album "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!"

The Hendrix guitar might be the most valuable, at up to $500,000. Hendrix is seen playing the guitar, left-handed, in a concert video, organizers said, which adds to its value.

Reach Schuyler Kropf at skropf@postandcourier.com or 937-5551.