Quote:
Originally Posted by bnorth
To the part I made bold. This is your second post with this. Please by any stretch of the imagination tell us how PWCC would be getting anything for free. In most if not all cases wouldn't they really be saving the consignor money? Unless you know something I don't. Did every aspect of running PWCC as a business become free because someones card didn't sell for $10?
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My apologies, I did not state that very well, and was more or less simply referring to the fact that the consignor didn't give anything to the seller, and vice versa in this scenario, other than a forfeited card. In my defense though, I did say "in effect" they got something for nothing, and didn't mean it in a simple, literal way, as you probably are taking it. I was thinking of this more from the consignor's side, as I did a little more expanded explaining in post #122, and mentioned how if the consignor was deemed to get hit with a commission/fee for having the card listed, then this was exactly the same amount they'd have to report as having technically sold the card for. And since the implied commission/fee and sales price are going to be exactly equal and offset one another, the consignor effectively got absolutely nothing for the card. And since the seller ends up with the card and the consignor nothing, I feel it's pretty safe to think that the consignor will feel the seller, in effect, got their card for nothing. And that was the context I was saying that under.
Consignors select and go to sellers to aid and assist them in selling their items for as much money as possible. When someone doesn't advise you properly to help you sell your items, even for a minimum set by the seller and not the consignor, and you simply end up handing your card over to the seller, how do think those consignors are going to feel?
Also, I do recognize that there could have been (and probably should be) some implied commission/fee owed to the seller. But to the extent that any forfeited card was worth more than some stated minimum commission/fee, then yes, the seller did get something for nothing, the excess value of the card over the supposed minimum commission/fee. Think of this, let's say you had two cards consigned in some seller's auction, and both were pretty much agreed upon by the hobby community to be worth $10 each. And one of them sold for exactly $10, while the other one didn't get a bid, for whatever reason, so the seller just took and kept it as theirs. Now I don't know what a normal seller's exact commission/fee would be on a $10 sale, but I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that you got money coming back to you on the $10 card sale, net of the seller's commissions/fees. So why would this seller get to effectively say that a card that is supposedly worth less than $10, because no one bid on it in that particular auction, should have a higher implied commission/fee than a card that did sell for $10? If that isn't tantamount to the seller getting something for nothing, what is? And yes, I know you're going to tell me the consignor signed and agreed to the seller's terms so it is on them. But in looking at it in my specific example, doesn't it seem extremely unfair to the consignor in this case?
Or how about a consignor who supposedly had a PSA7 1953 Topps common card in an auction that no one bid on? I know it is only a common, but what would you have to pay today just to get PSA to grade that same card, forgetting about the actual value of the card itself? I think pretty much everyone on Net54 would agree that card is worth at least $10. Now how pissed do you think the owner of that card would be at the thought of some seller just taking it. And even if someone else then speculated that a seller likely wouldn't take that card from the consignor as a forfeiture in that particular instance, then they probably shouldn't take anyone's card ever, and at least be consistent in their treatment of all consignors. Has anyone here on Net54 ever actually lost a card to a seller through such a forfeiture provision? If so, would be curious to know how they were treated and if they were offered any other options than forfeiting their card.
However, as I've also mentioned, I've never consigned anything to any AH or online seller and have never actually seen one of these consignment agreements, especially ones with forfeiture clauses, and am just asking questions myself. So I don't know if any one would actually spell out and define a minimum commission/fee to be charged someone in their consignment agreements, or if they would explicitly refer to the forfeiture of unsold cards as payment for such commissions/fees, or not. And absent such specific language in such agreements, that is all one can do is speculate what they actually meant/intended.
And as I explained in post #122, knowing how a seller may internally account for these forfeitures would really help to answer whether they themselves feel they paid anything for these forfeited cards or not. But that is something we'll likely never be able to find out for any seller.