Without the personality, but he does have a bigger variety of greasy sidekicks.

Looking back at my Goldin invoices I was never charged a credit card fee. Each invoice shows $0.00 for this.

I'm amazed how many PSA 8 1988 Topps All Stars and the like they fill their auctions with.

You think Goldin is struggling to keep up?

The BP percent will not go down when the market cools and other Auction Houses will keep an eye on Goldin and if they feel Goldin is not losing consignments and sales from it then they will follow with increasing their BP percentage.

Their site shows they charge it now. I have never bid with them (because of their website design which I find too hard to navigate) and maybe it is that they used to discount the invoices for payments by check, wire, etc?

Golden now has to answer to CU and the stakes are much higher, for perspective if they had to pay the freight on a $200,000,000 loan at 7% the interest alone would be north of $1.6 million per month or $415,000 per weekly auction.

Of course the pressure is on, CU paid at the top of the market with drunken projections for the future and a poorly designed platform.

Don't lose sight that Ken is a really, really good salesman and the CU gang were using OPM for their purchase.

It's an exhausting high stakes game that hobbyists don't even need to engage in, imho.

This.

Imma go out on a limb and suggest that the weekly auctions aren’t paying much of the debt service here. It’s the premier auctions that are doing the heavy lifting.

I'll posit the 2021 projections were generous at best. The business model was flawed imo at those heady levels. MJ rookies and the whole fomo all boats rise with the tide mentality took hold, when your talking about those corporate investment levels it's no longer about the hobby but serious ROI. I'm no expert thankfully, I'm just a collector but it's not rocket science to observe collectible economic cycles.

Good post

I have no axe to grind re: Goldin. They are a board advertiser, and I have bought from them many times. I will say that their auctions, at least on the vintage side, have gotten real thin of late. Some of the weekly auctions are super unimpressive.

Everyone who rushed to weekly and monthly auctions should go back to 3 or 4 a year. Market has been changed and not for the better. It's relentless and waters down your product.

When CU bought Goldin they quit advertising here. They might advertise in the future again. There is no doubt Ken has to answer to CU in many ways.

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I predict all major AHs will now go to 22 percent by the beginning of 2024.

Some have posited that these weekly auctions are a natural result of the decline of eBay due to the newly lowered threshold for 1099s on that platform. I suspect that the weekly auctions have their place in this brave new world, although agree that most of the weeklies tend to be full of vast mountains of bargain bin items, which can be difficult to feel any desire to attempt to keep up with. Particularly because it’s usually not as simple as just setting an eBay search alert for when something on your wish list comes along.

I would predict Heritage would be the first to follow.

For many years now, Heritage has been doing weekly auctions. I never really view them, and even more rarely buy from weekly auctions, but I think they (and monthly auctions, which groups like sterling and iconic have been doing for years) have an audience and legitimate value in the marketplace. They dont bother me at all. If you dont like them, dont look at them.

I do agree that the big auction events have been watered down. REA;s auctions used to be all the rage. They are still great, but dont have the buzz and chatter they used to have. Heritage has an auction every month, which potentially lessens the sensation of their platinum events. All that said, there is still a ton of great stuff coming to auction all the time, so i dont the its affecting the overall quality of material brought to the market annually.

Regarding Goldin, I have no issue with them whatsoever and have only had good experiences. That said, I am not sure i have bought anything from Goldin since it was sold - I think the website/interface is annoying and clumsy/non-intuitive and the auctions rarely have items I want. But if/when they have something that appeals to me, I will bid with them and i will do so with confidence. I have never consigned anything to Goldin and I am not sure i ever will- this increased BP makes it even more unlikely.

Good to know.

Drew, I'll give it until the end of 2024.

I'd bet against this. I think each AH will analyze their situation (expenses, profit margin,) and make independent decisions. They won't simply follow Goldin like lemmings.

CU has a near monopoly situation with PSA and that registry. I think they underestimated the collective (pun intended) strength of all the other AH when they acquired Goldin. When you look at all the great stuff continually offered by the other AH, both the major and smaller ones, there's a ton of really high-quality items Goldin isn't getting a piece of.

In short, I think CU expected Goldin to dominate the AH space to a far greater extent than they are, and this price increase may be a reaction to that. IMO it will only give them a competitive disadvantage.

I would bet large that Hunt, specifically, will not go from 17.5% to 22% for at least a few years, if ever.

Mark, I'd almost be happy for Hunt to increase its BP from 17.5% to 20%, provided this increment was used to acquire state-of-the-art auction software. :)

LOL, I hear you! Their website, which usually has only one picture per lot, is as basic (primitive) as it gets. But, their live auctions (run by Invaluable) are great. I participated (in a small way) in the one 2 days ago. Very fun.

I'd rather have the 17.5% and basic website though, and I've found their customer service to be very good. Their catalogs are excellent as well - when they arrive, a quick perusal tells me if there's anything of interest.

Each AH will go their own way. They won't all follow Goldin.

When I posted my last message, concerning Goldin advertising here, I hadn't known about emails that went to spam yesterday. They might start advertising again very soon, in some form.
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What an outrage having to pay taxes. :)

HA.

I don't doubt that's part of it. Another part could just be the administrative side. I suspect most of us struggle to keep good records about every piece we have, and then report each of those individual sales and our gain/loss. Even if you only sell 1 piece each week, that's 52 sales to be tracking and reporting on your tax return. In some cases, your income might be little or nothing, so no real tax to be paid - just administrative stuff to navigate.

I'm guessing the average American feels like that entire exercise is one gigantic hassle that they'd prefer to avoid if they can. Plus not wanting to endure the administrative hassle it's a great excuse to feel better about yourself if it also happens to result in you paying less tax.

I believe Goldin issues a 1099 form, so no getting around that with them.

I suspect most people don't pay taxes unless they know they could get caught by a paper trail.

They don't send 1099s, as of now, but anything can change in the future.
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FYI: Mr. Goldin monitors this board very actively so rest assured he is digesting what is being posted

Rich

I assumed they did, because when I sold a few things through there from the vault, they deducted a big percentage of it for "withholding", until I provided my tax information to them.

Too true. Mr. Mint only had Zubes, his Pancho Sanza, while Goldin has many dubious assistants.

The 1099s aren't the issue with eBay, the cost is. eBay has gotten ever grubbier, to the point where DIY selling there isn't worth it. Even when I had my store and my top-rated seller status, the combination of closing fees payment processing fees charged on the hammer AND the shipping AND the sales tax, and shipping costs, put me at nearly 15% of the hammer price OOP. Well, for 5% more I can send the same cards to REA for the Encore auction and avoid the time suckage of retailing dozens of items? Plus, no whining, no lost items, and no returns? That's a no-brainer for me.

I enjoyed Goldin's auctions in the past. I've won many times at reasonable price and I've had customer support issues that were dealt with quickly and professionally.

That said their auctions have gone way down hill as of late. I don't even look at the weekly auctions anymore because it is filled with 2000's base cards graded PSA 7. Also its not very easy to sort out 4000 listings a week.

I really enjoyed the monthly auctions from Goldin - much more so than these weekly things - which i think are born from the deal with PSA where you can send your cards to grade and then send them directly to goldin to be auctioned.

It has caused a whole lot of riff raff to be listed and lessened the offerings.

The search feature on their site is brutal.

Try searching "m113" and see what you get...

Not sure how "2020 Panini Immaculate Collection Rookie Pigskin Logo #RS22 AJ Dillon Relic Rookie Card (#1/1) - BGS NM-MT+ 8.5" is among the results...

With all the money of Nat and his group behind them, you would think it wouldn't be that hard to fix this?

Exactly one of the issues I had. There is no good way to search in an organized fashion and the when you do specific searches you get back tons of stuff that presumably has nothing to do with the search. Been happening on ebay too the last couple of years.

Think it is intentional to put things in front of you even if you do not want them. You get what you are looking for as well as what they don't want you to miss.

Perhaps you are right, but it seems most people just get pissed off.

Agree with you that ebay searches have been flagging extraneous stuff too, although it's usually not that far off, like if you search for PSA 8s they might throw some 7s into the mix. Not like Doug's example.

I tried searching "Ruth" & couldn't believe all of the lots that came up.

Search engines have gotten progressively worse on almost all platforms through the years. I run a couple of my own websites with search engines built into them, that I rely on through my web hosts, and 10 years ago I would have said I was happy with them. Now I have to give hints to people for complicated workarounds to get relevant results, that may or may not work…depending on what been fiddled around with lately in the guts of the engine.

Software in general seems to be getting less and less intuitive and innovative for the common user. I suspect it has a lot to do with large corporate entities in the tech world exploiting the practice of copywriting and patenting specific lines of common code, which attempts to keep everything in house, stifles innovation, and throws a monkey wrench into already existing platforms and infrastructure.

Ruth Buzzi PSA 9 was sharp.

So tempting.

There is a set of cards I regularly search for on eBay, and over time my list of 'exclusions' in the search bar has now grown to this (in order to JUST see the cards I'm actually searching for):

-(dean, sheffield, calender, amberstone, usaf, losers, pottery, nasa, china, buick, saucer, rosemary, rainbow, caron, granada, baby, mclaughlin, relish, salt, billy jack, steel, license plate)

Personally I don't care what the BP is, I'll bid what I want factoring in the BP to the total cost. My issue with Goldin, besides the search functions, is the request for banking information before being able to put in bids totalling over $10k. I'm not a high roller by any stretch, but I know my limits and if I have to come back multiple times waiting to be outbid to put in placeholder bids, forget it. In today's market $10k in bids is not that much but there's no way I'm giving Goldin any of my personal financial info in order to bid. I know there are others like me as well on this subject.

I hate to be a nitpicker, but as a Lit major in college, I am obligated to point out that Don Quixote's sidekick was Sancho Panza.

Pancho Sanza?

Forget it, he's rolling.

It isn't about the bidders--they are irrelevant--it is about setting a higher baseline for Goldin's share of consignors' money.

I like him. I really like him.

I'd take the under on that bet