Unless I’ve misread, I don’t think anyone is objecting to the auction house getting their cut. The question is to the formatting of it, splitting your actual bid into two parts to try and mask or lose focus on one of those parts. The BP isn’t even the auction houses cut, as many here are talking about, a lot of times part of it is given to the seller too.
Auction house can charge a consignment fee or sellers premium, a buyers premium, and the final bid, or it could simply take X% of the final bid. If nobody ever forgets about any of the fees or they are not a psychological trick designed around how people think, everyone would raise their bid accordingly and the auction house would make the some amount of money with a much simpler and direct system for everyone. The only reason not to use a simpler system with the same $$$ at the end of it, is psychology and what people respond to.
They don’t do this because it is a physiological trick that works. Consigners don’t want to hear they have to give up 25% of the hammer price or whatever it is, having separate fees looks better even if it’s the same dollars at the end of the day. And buyers have an easier time raising those bids when the BP is kept separate, not having to really input their actual total spend. It works.
To recognize it works this way and why is not to say auction houses should work as a charity and not make any money.
|