[raulus]

I'll add one more observation. A few years ago, in chatting with a major auction house, they mentioned that most of their activity is actually in brokering private sales. At least dollar-wise, if not sheer number of pieces sold.

From what I gathered from that discussion, part of the story here is that a lot of these pieces are often well into 6 and even 7 figures price point. So it's some nice stuff going through these private off-market sales.

An example they gave at the time was a 1952T PSA 9 Mays that they helped broker for $750K. I've also seen some publicity pieces suggesting that other items were similarly brokered/sold by auction houses for 6 or 7 figures in off-market transactions.

Now, it's entirely possible that the market has shifted, particularly in the last year, with sellers opting to go through the auction process to get buyers bidding everything up to the stratosphere. And if you can get the auction house to add in a few extensions (days or weeks) to the bidding timeline, then the sky's the limit! Maybe today those off-market sales aren't as prominent as previously. But I wouldn't be surprised if they're still happening for those really premium items that command a major fortune, simply because those pieces in some cases might never really be offered for sale, but an owner might be enticed to give it up by an auction house, if the auction house has already found the right buyer at the right price.

Add to that, our friends at Heritage have a feature on their website where you can make an offer on an item previously sold through their auctions. Over the last few years, I've received several offers for items that I picked up at previous Heritage auctions. My recollection is that Heritage takes a smaller cut than usual for these sales (maybe 10% or 15%), although it's not nothing. I've never actually sold anything this way, but I suspect that there are probably some deals getting done this way, at least if the offer isn't just some crackpot lowball offer, which tends to be a lot of what I have received.