(WXIN/WTTV) — Are you in the market for a new pickleball paddle… or maybe thousands of them? If so, you’re in luck.
Starting Monday, Christy’s of Indiana is running an online auction of the entire inventory of the now-defunct business, Pickleball Rocks.
“I think this is going to be a good auction. I just think it’s such a hot ticket right now,” said Jack Christy, Jr., owner of the Indiana auction house. “Pickleball is just really hot.”
Spread out over 7,000 square feet of storage space at Christy’s is all manner of pickleball gear: hats, shirts, balls, nets, promotional magnets and license plate frames, plus a whole lot of paddles.
The carbon fiber paddles number 3,200. Most are bundled in lots of four.
“We’re trying to get our lots down to where somebody that’s an end user or somebody that plays pickleball would be able to buy it,” explained Christy.
It’s hoped keeping the lots small will generate more money because the proceeds go to people victimized in a wide-reaching pickleball investment scam.
Rodney Grubbs and Pickleball Rocks
For years, Rodney Grubbs traveled the country visiting pickleball tournaments. At these events, he would sell his game equipment and coax players to invest in his pickleball business and some real estate deals.
Grubbs was a convincing salesman, closing on hundreds of promissory notes, commonly offering investment returns of 12% or more annually. But as these notes with ballooning interest piled up over the years, increasingly frustrated investors sought a way to stop Grubbs and recover at least some of their money.
In February, a group of investors successfully convinced a federal judge to force Grubbs into bankruptcy. That required Grubbs to produce a list of his investors and how much he owed them. The total debt is roughly $ 47 million.
The attorney representing over 300 investors, Matthew Foster, said he’s been pouring over Grubbs bank records and other disclosures hoping to find a large cache of hidden money. But the effort has come up empty.
“It looks like (Grubbs) may well have spent everything. I’m not confident that we’ll find a pot of gold here,” lamented Foster.
It appears Grubbs was churning new investments to pay off older investments. Foster says recent records indicate Grubbs paid hundreds of thousands to people he owed money.
The remaining assets include the pickleball business and some property in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Foster notes the bankruptcy trustee continues to look for other possible hidden assets, but he’s not optimistic.
“My sense is that they’ve pretty much identified they think they can liquidate,” said Foster who projects the sale of assets will only produce about $2-million to compensate Grubbs’ investors.
For those creditors, it could mean they’ll see as little as 3-5% recovery of the money they are owed. For more information on Grubbs, read FOX59/CBS4’s investigation here.
