Quote:
Originally Posted by perezfan
Regardless of who owns the item, the auction house still has related selling expenses.
The auction software, photographer, description writer, catalogue publisher, and shipping/packaging personnel are all fixed costs that are paid either partially or in-full from the AH's Buying and Selling premiums.
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No, that is not an accurate analysis for purposes of analyzing why AH's use the selling price + BP model rather than taking a straight commission off the selling price. Mathematically, it is all one sale price for one item and one set of marketing costs for the auction; whether it is paid from BP on the sell price or a commission is mathematically irrelevant. Since what you label it and how you slice it up does not change the overall costs on either side of the equation, it means that there is a non-financial motive to cut the price of the card into a price and a BP and complicate the administration of the auction. IMO it is to set up a structure where bidders get into a fight and 'forget' the BP when bidding and therefore bid more.
The opposite model is something we use every day. eBay takes a commission on every sale, with no BP.