As an addendum to this post, I thought I would mention something about the sales commission (or what we today call a buyer's premium) that Charles Bray charged for those early card auctions in Card Collector's Bulletin. In all of the Bray auction listings that appeared in CCB in the 1940s, including those that listed the rules at the beginning (like several of those posted above), there is no mention of any sales commission. The first mention of such a commission that I've been able to find is in the June 1, 1950 CCB, in which Bray mentioned at the end of the auction listing that the sales commission was 10% of the price realized:
Yet from other sources, it's pretty clear that Bray was charging a 10% sales commission before that, which makes sense given all the work he was putting into running the auctions. In the August 1, 1948 CCB, Jefferson Burdick described a two-day visit he had made to Bray's home, including all the time and effort Bray was putting into the sales, and says that "my opinion is that the 10% commission is well earned."
The 10% sales commission remained unchanged through the end of 1960. In the December 1, 1960 CCB (#129), Bray announced that he was raising the sales commission to 15%. His wording implies that the commission had been 10% since the beginning:
Finally, here is an example of a bid sheet for a Bray auction from around that time, the only example I have. There is no mention of a sales commission on here, but maybe that's because it was mentioned in CCB by this time; it may be that the early bid sheets from the 1940s mentioned the 10% commission.
