Making a Major card purchase (51 Bowman Mantle) - where do YOU prefer to shop??

[jethrod3]

I would prefer to buy my slabbed Mantle rookie from an auction house but that probably won't happen. With the expected winning bid for perhaps anything above around a 1 representing what would be a huge chunk of change for me, I just have a hard time coming to grips with paying the buyer's premium. I'd likely be paying a bp of 20% to most auction houses that, in listing maybe that PSA 3 Mantle I want, has to do the same amount of work as listing an item that brings in 1/10th of that amount and only therefore charges a bp that equates to 1/10th of the total amount of the buyer's premium for the Mantle.

To be clear, this is in no way meant to be a criticism of auction houses, and I fully realize that for rarer, more valuable pieces, auction houses may do a lot more work promoting them than less valuable pieces, and this would of course justify receiving higher compensation. But the lower middle grade Mantles are fairly common and need little promotion. For me, I think I just have some sort of a mental block about paying a 20% BP when it ends up translating to a large amount of money.