Posted By:
Mark"Why do you think the opening bid is so high? It's because that's the very least the current owner would consider selling the card for. It has nothing to do with any objective "market" for the card. It has nothing to do with the "value" of the card."
Ryan: As a hof collector, it's quite disturbing to read that the minimum bids in your auction bear absolutely no relation whatsoever to your assessment of fair market value. If I understand you correctly, if someone were to win Hill and flip it on ebay, the winner might realize a mere fraction of the $230k+ he or she paid.
In your own words, you are permitting consignors to set minimum bids that you feel exceed fair market value, and you are the foremost authority on the fair market value of these cards. That is not how other bb card auction houses - REA, Mastro, Lelands, etc, - operate. Other auction houses establish opening bids at less than fair market value. If you are going to operate fundamentally differently from other bb card auction houses, shouldn't you warn collectors who might be spending 10k or 35k or 230k on one card that the minimum price they're paying may exceed fair market value??
Mark