• Over 20 Years of Personal Experience In Full Service Estate Liquidation: Appraisals – Auctions - Estate Sales - Fair Market Evaluations - Complete Estate Purchase
  
  
• Auctioneers To: Families, Attorneys - Banks - Museums – Major Estates
  
  
• Full time auctioneers specializing in professional catalogued auctions of Fine Art, Antiques and Rare Collectibles
  
  
• Expertise and resources to maximize any situation.
  
  
• Vigorous promotion campaigns that utilize direct mail, email, Internet web sites, collector’s club lists & publications, illustrated ads in trade publications, printed catalogs, profusely illustrated online catalogs, traveling previews, press release and more to reach the appropriate market for Fine Art, Antiques and Rare Collectibles.
  
  
• Tasteful and attractive promotion, presentation and display that serves as a tribute to the collector
  
  
• Complete insurance coverage - protecting the client from start to finish
  
  
• Professional service with empathy and respect for the client and their family.
  
  

We are a family run business recognized as a mid-west leader in the marketing of Fine Art, Antiques and Rare Collector’s items.

Dirk and Sue Soulis own and operate the business from their 7200 square foot auction facility east of Lee’s Summit Missouri in Lone Jack. Auctions are conducted there and at the Overland Park Convention Center. On occasion, special events are conducted on-site. Each auction is a nationally advertised, catalogued event with bidders and buyers participating from around the world.

For Dirk, the evolution to a career in the Fine Arts auction business began while he was attending college in 1984. He eventually worked his way through school buying and selling at local shows and auctions, while also working the ring for two Fine Art and Antiques auctioneers.

By 1991 he was completing college at Central Missouri State University, running his Antique shop and exhibiting at vetted antique shows in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Nashville, and Brimfield (Massachusetts). The Antiques business was now his full time occupation, and the brokering of important objects for others was becoming more and more a part of that business. This included a sale to the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art and the arrangement of major works being sold through prominent auction houses.

In 1997 Dirk designed and built Great Plains Gallery, a 7200 square foot auction facility east of Lee’s Summit Missouri in Lone Jack, and conducted his first auction. Since then he’s promoted nearly one hundred auctions specializing in Fine Art, Antiques and Rare Collector’s items, cataloging tens of thousands of objects, and building a valuable clientele database.

In May of 1999 he conducted one of the very first live Internet bidding auctions ever held anywhere, and sold an oil painting by Herbert Dunton for $49,875.00, an auction record for the artist at that time. Since then, Dirk Soulis Auctions has sold millions of dollars in Art and Antiques to buyers from all over the world.

In January of 2003, Dirk and his wife Sue presented the estate of the artist Robert MacDonald Graham (1919-2003) at the Overland Park Convention Center, the first Ebay Live Auction ever held in the Mid-west. Even now, Dirk Soulis Auctions remains the mid-west leader in the billion dollar-a-year live Internet auction industry.

Since 2003 Dirk Soulis Auctions has conducted more than 40 gallery auctions that were simultaneously broadcast live over the Internet - cataloging over 18,271 lots and posting more than 146,230 color images. As a result, millions of dollars have been sold to more than 5000 buyers from around the world (statistics as of April 10, 2006, per Liveauctioneers.com).

In 2004, they brought the 1.5 million-dollar Greg Warren estate from Denver to Kansas City. Bidders from around the world participated, including three countries represented in the sales room. Several record prices were realized.

In 2005, Dirk discovered several hundred works by a previously unlisted illustration artist named Lloyd Rognan. As a result of Dirk’s research, promotion and presentation, Lloyd’s works are now included in serious collections and inventories around the country and he’s listed among American artists as an important illustrator. Also, the sale of these works has provided his widow with some financial security. Visit Askart.com to learn more about Lloyd Rognan and read the artist’s biography.

In 2005 Dirk and Sue purchased ESTATE SALES BY OUIDA, Kansas City’s oldest firm handling some of the city’s most prestigious estates. Dirk and his staff worked with and trained under Ouida Roach and her daughter Kathy Jordan prior to purchasing the firm. Their range of services in estate settlement is complete and comprehensive, providing individuals and fiduciaries with total support throughout this process. The ‘estate sale’ method of dissolution (where items are sold through a fixed-price sale held within the home) can be a viable alternative to the auction marketing method. Often, a little of each approach is a good strategy for maximizing the value of an estate.

Dirk Soulis is a member of the National Auctioneers Association, the American Society of Appraisers, and numerous collectors’ clubs. In 2002 he resumed studies at UMKC and has completed Personal Property Valuation courses 101, 102, 103 and 104, plus studies in appraisal report writing and the Uniform Standards of Appraisal Practice. Re-accreditation studies are on going.

He and his wife Sue and their son Alex live on fourteen acres east of Lone Jack Missouri, along with eighteen various pets. They attend Faith United Methodist Church in Grain Valley, Missouri.

Dirk and Sue are also the promoters of KANSAS CITY’S ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES SHOW, hosting seven Antiques shows per year.