LOG Auction:Tom Brady's got NUTHIN' on This Inflation!!

[Al C.risafulli]

Love of the Game is taking 23% on top of winning bids.

I have gotten used to the 20% from other auction houses...has anyone seen buyers' premiums this high?

Hi all:

Just a quick point of reference on this: our buyer's premium is, for all practical purposes, 20%, similar to many other auctions.

What's different between us and many other auctions is that in addition to accepting payment via check or money order, we also accept payment by PayPal and credit card. We've always felt that this was a great convenience to offer our customers - however, doing so costs us as much as 4% of the entire transaction. At this point, roughly 50% of our customers pay this way.

While we've tried to shoulder as much of that expense as possible for as long as possible, it is extraordinarily difficult to do so, particularly in our Premier auction, which includes a full-color printed catalog. Therefore, we were left with two options: discontinue taking PayPal and credit cards, or figure out a way to be competitive with the market, while still offering the PayPal and credit card option.

After our last catalog auction, we spoke to a lot of customers about this, and many of them really like having the ability to pay by PayPal or credit card. So we elected to continue to offer it as a payment option. However, we need to be able to capture the fees that we are charged to offer this convenience.

As such, we elected to raise our buyer's premium to 23%. HOWEVER, should you elect to pay by check or money order, we discount the buyer's premium by 3%, to 20%. It is our hope - and our strong suggestion - that bidders will pay this way, and take full advantage of the discount.

I hope that this makes things clear to anyone that has a question or did not quite understand the update the way I'd written it in the catalog (which some of you should be receiving today).

-Al