Posted By:
Judge Dred (Fred)I was talking to a friend today and we got on the subject of the Mastro auctions going to a 20% BP.
My friend made a lot of sense, he indicated that it could be that they may take less from the seller (seller's premium) so that they can get the consignments and they are making up the difference (of lower seller premiums) through an increase in the BP.
This would allow them to continue to get nice material (lower seller's premium) and still keep their margin by having the buyer pay for it. There is a finite supply of cards so getting the cards in a highly competitive market may take negotiating lower seller premiums.
I suppose the bottom line is that you should factor the BP into the bid amount. 20% is a pretty big chunk. We can only hope that the other auction houses with less overhead don't follow suit in raising their BPs.