AH (PWCC) Reality Check Please

[mechanicalman]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Thanks guys. Glad to know I am not losing my mind. Brent seems to have no idea what I'm possibly talking about. I guess some people can't say "gee sorry ....maybe we did fk that up." Lots of other places to deal with. As others pointed out, while they may provide a level of convenience, it ain't like they are marketing your cards for you. They do nothing more or less than what anyone else does listing cards on eBay. We can debate exactly how many more or less eyeballs they get, they are nothing more than a posting and mailing service.
I received a card from the same auction today, and a fairly pricey one, and it will certainly be the last one I buy from them. Who knows, maybe that seller got reemed too and I made out.

Just a posting and mailing service? Do you not see their banner ads above this thread? I bet they spend more on digital marketing than any other AH except Heritage.

[mechanicalman]

WaJo example: One is also very well centered, and one is not.

[BeanTown]

Sniping services cost money to use and I only use them if the item I want is above a certain amount. Other items I put in my high bid and let it ride.

I guess I'm more on the lazy side where I'd rather have an EBay auction company like PWCC sell my consignments. I'd rather send them a box of cards that they can open up, take the picture, give it a title, a quick description, answer any questions about it during the auction, collect the money from the buyer, package the item, ship the item, leave feedback, pay the eBay fees, pay the PayPal fees, and then pocket roughly 2 to 5 percent for their effort. I'm OK with that.

I've consigned to PWCC at the National this year for my first time. Earlier in the year I won nice looking Pafko 52 Topps from another auction company. I had roughly 430.00 in the card and it sold in PWCC for around 150.00. Plus, it got left out of their bigger auction and after I reminded them about it, I was told that they wanted to run it later to make it stick out more. I guess that made sense somewhat, so I let them do it.

I've also won items from PWCC where there were mass bid retractions which left me the high bidder from my bid days earlier. I will say that Brent gave me the option to back out or take the card. I took the card.

My hunch is PWCC most likely didn't look at the close date, because most years November 8 is just another night. I think if any of the consignors notified PWCC and alerted them that they didn't want their consignments ending on Election night that they would pull it and run the next cycle.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

Sniping services cost money to use

They don't have to. JustSnipe has free options, for example.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

Sniping services cost money to use and I only use them if the item I want is above a certain amount.

Wrong.

www.gavelsnipe.com
have used it for probably 10+ yrs and always free and rarely fails.

And whoever says PWCC is only a mail and ship company, I guess you haven't seen their dedicated banner and also large banners on this board. ALL of our advertisers are appreciated but They (PWCC) spend far more than others do advertising here. They get attention through advertising, go figure.

[PhillipAbbott79]

Originally Posted by mechanicalman

WaJo example: One is also very well centered, and one is not.

Exactly my caveat and my point.

Exactly why you can't really compare any card with any other card or look at VCP and make a blanket comparison to say that they always get top dollar for a grade, or that they get more reach and more bids when that information is not made available to the public, or that you would get more money by consigning to them rather than selling it yourself.

My best guess on why people pay more for a card on PWCC, when it does happens, than any where else is the auction closes immediately at a point in time. 2 people put in high numbers hoping to 'buy' the card at the last second and end up paying for the card out of their poopers. Not that they really would have paid that much in another auction style, or that they really want to pay that much for that item.

[smallpaul2002]

PWCC has more followers on ebay than most others..It is highly unlikely you snag an item off a PWCC auction that is "a deal", you likely paid "market price" at the time...What a person "thinks" their item is worth and what a buyer is willing to pay are always the topic of conversation when it comes to collectables. PWCC usually has quite a few eyes focused on their items, when at auction, I think the closing time is irrelevant, if someone wants your item they will pay for it.

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by smallpaul2002

PWCC has more followers on ebay than most others..It is highly unlikely you snag an item off a PWCC auction that is "a deal", you likely paid "market price" at the time...What a person "thinks" their item is worth and what a buyer is willing to pay are always the topic of conversation when it comes to collectables. PWCC usually has quite a few eyes focused on their items, when at auction, I think the closing time is irrelevant, if someone wants your item they will pay for it.

Not true at all. I don't care who you are. If you are selling items when no one is watching, they aren't going to bring high prices. Period.

[Rich Klein]

I was chatting about this thread with a fellow board member (NOT LEON) yesterday and his question was:

If you saw when the auction opened it would close on Election Day, why did you not contact PWCC to have the auction killed so it would close at a better time? Is that something possible in your contract with PWCC?

Thanks!
Rich

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

I was chatting about this thread with a fellow board member (NOT LEON) yesterday and his question was:

If you saw when the auction opened it would close on Election Day, why did you not contact PWCC to have the auction killed so it would close at a better time? Is that something possible in your contract with PWCC?

Thanks!
Rich

This. I would have been on the horn immediately. And if it didn't dawn on you until later, it's possible it didn't dawn on Brent, either.

[IMAXMAX]

I too have have noticed that card prices have been down the past coupla months (as was mentioned earlier in this thread)...
I also use a bid snipe service and really pay no attention to the closing date of an auction

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by conor912

This. I would have been on the horn immediately. And if it didn't dawn on you until later, it's possible it didn't dawn on Brent, either.

As soon as I realized this was the case I emailed Brent and told him I was concerned about this. My email and his response below:

On Nov 7, 2016, at 6:53 AM, steven napolitano wrote:

> I wish I had realized last month when I consigned these cards that my auctions were ending on election night at 10pm when everyone's going to be glued to their TV screens. Awful timing.
>
> Steve


On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 1:50 PM, PWCC wrote:

Probably a really good time to have items closing. As you say, everyone will be home and doing very little.

Brent
-Sent from mobile

[Rich Klein]

So far, you have proved the point, you noticed this the day before Election Day and yes many people did believe there was a foregone conclusion who would win (it turned out to be incorrect) and win early in the evening.

But I agree with Brent on one part of this, if you don't notice the closing date and its significance until the day before it closes, than just hope a lot of people are home with nothing to do.

Regards
Rich

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

As soon as I realized this was the case I emailed Brent and told him I was concerned about this. My email and his response below:

On Nov 7, 2016, at 6:53 AM, steven napolitano wrote:

> I wish I had realized last month when I consigned these cards that my auctions were ending on election night at 10pm when everyone's going to be glued to their TV screens. Awful timing.
>
> Steve


On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 1:50 PM, PWCC wrote:

Probably a really good time to have items closing. As you say, everyone will be home and doing very little.

Brent
-Sent from mobile

Ah, yeah. That's on him.

[Snapolit1]

Regardless of who won the election, about 50% of the American population was going to enraged with frothing mouths, and 50% of them were going to be high fiving each other and popping champagne, and something very close to 100% of them weren't on Bay looking at baseball cards.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In this device generation people multitask -- not that hard to look at ebay on your smartphone or tablet while watching the election. Again, have you looked at other cards closing around the same time to see if there was a pattern of low prices realized?

[Rich Klein]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Regardless of who won the election, about 50% of the American population was going to enraged with frothing mouths, and 50% of them were going to be high fiving each other and popping champagne, and something very close to 100% of them weren't on Bay looking at baseball cards.

NO ONE Is arguing that fact.

Again, no one is disputing Presidential Election Day is probably not the best day to end an auction. What we are noting is: YOU could have noticed the closing date when the auction began not with only one day to go. That's why it's a slight difference of opinion.

Rich

[Yoda]

No matter how you feel about PWCC, good, bad or indifferent, I think it is clear they have captured market share from traditional AH's and other Ebay auctioneers, such as Probstein.

[Beastmode]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

NO ONE Is arguing that fact.

Again, no one is disputing Presidential Election Day is probably not the best day to end an auction. What we are noting is: YOU could have noticed the closing date when the auction began not with only one day to go. That's why it's a slight difference of opinion.

Rich

++Well stated. Maybe OP can go to Oregon and protest? Portland is not far from Lake Oswego. Blame someone else for why his card sold for below VCP.

Seems a little harsh to throw PWCC under the bus on the most reputable card forum in the universe, then retaliate with a "never doing business again". With customers like this, who needs enemies.

[Snapolit1]

You are entitled to your opinion. You may have noticed that basically everyone else agree with me that this was a stupid business move.

[glchen]

I think Steve has a valid point in that the auctions should not have ended on election day. I think that was a mistake by PWCC. Again, PWCC has been in this business a long time, so perhaps they've ended auction on election days in the past, and it hasn't been a problem, but the fact that this election was so close probably moved a lot of folks from looking at ebay auctions to staring at their TV channels or surfing the internet to refresh election voting data. However, I think Brent's response was naïve. By that logic, you can also have major auctions end on Thanksgiving day because most folks are at home not doing much but stuffing themselves with turkey either.

Also, I don't think consignors like Steve could have predicted that their consignment would have ended on election day. I have seen PWCC move their auction start days a little before the auctions were supposed to begin. (Perhaps because they were running a bit behind on processing the incoming consignments or knew that a large consignment was about to arrive.) Of course, once they knew for certain that they didn't like the auction end date, perhaps they could have pushed for Brent to move the listings to the next auction.

Same thing for auctions that end past midnight EST. The problem is that PWCC has too many consignments. What was originally auctions ending over 1-2 weeks is now going on 2-3. I knew that there was something thread where Brent asked different forums what they advise he should do in these cases. Basically, they are trying to space auction close times about a minute apart. However, with so many consignments, they can't all fit in the "sweet spot" for auction close endings. It's similar on Sundays where many auctions end at before 5pm EST. Many consignors have also complained about those ending times.

With consigning items to auction, it is always a roll of the dice. If you can consign the items to a non-ebay auction house, you can always try to specify a start price with the AH at which you could at least be okay with. Val put a tremendously helpful post in this thread (#32) on all of the things that consignors should do and think about. Finally, if you are only looking to sell your items at VCP and you don't have a lot to sell, you should just list it yourself via BIN on ebay at the VCP or a little above. Folks (including myself) use AH's because they are hoping that they will be able get a price significantly above VCP. However with auctions, it is always a roll of the dice. You never know if the folks who want to buy your item are actually looking at your auction.

Finally, on election day, I bid on 10 items (via snipe) on PWCC and I won two. I think I got a decent deal on one item but the other one was near my max bid. The ones I lost went above my max bid, which basically means it was near VCP or above. For example, I wanted the Tabacalera Babe Ruth / Lou Gehrig card that sold on election day in PWCC. This was the same card that Leon had during his auction from Heritage. I basically put a snipe out for the same price the card sold for at Heritage (~1800). However, it sold for a bit more, at $1885, even though it was election day. Therefore, you can say that PWCC still had a higher realized price than a major auction house, and the seller probably netted more because PWCC didn't have a 20% BP. Again, I'm sure Leon was still very happy with how Heritage handled his consignments as some sold for huge prices. However, the point is not all items that sold on election day laid an egg.

[BeanTown]

Leon,

I've always used auctionsniper.com and since I don't buy a lot through EBay, I have not shopped other auction sniper companies. I will look at using them in the future if free.

Brent, people were glued to their TV during the election night process. No matter who you voted for. Lisa was yelling at the TV and emotional roller coaster ride the entire night. The "champainge" bottles were opened after 3AM which by then all the PWCC auctions had closed.

Chris, did you ask Brent to stop your consignment listings? If yes ... you have a beef. If no, then you let it ride knowingly.

[pokerplyr80]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

As soon as I realized this was the case I emailed Brent and told him I was concerned about this. My email and his response below:

On Nov 7, 2016, at 6:53 AM, steven napolitano wrote:

> I wish I had realized last month when I consigned these cards that my auctions were ending on election night at 10pm when everyone's going to be glued to their TV screens. Awful timing.
>
> Steve


On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 1:50 PM, PWCC wrote:

Probably a really good time to have items closing. As you say, everyone will be home and doing very little.

Brent
-Sent from mobile

Their auction schedule was probably created at the beginning of the year for the entire year. And they basically run constantly throughout the year. Should they have changed it for the election? Possibly. What about the debates? The world series? Other big sporting events?

It is unfortunate your auctions didn't bring the desired result. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that having so many people home watching the election might actually help the auction. I get my ebay alerts on my phone and would have had no trouble putting in a snipe while watching the coverage.

[Jeffrompa]

Maybe they can end some auctions on Christmas Eve . See how that goes .

[Brent Huigens]

Hi everyone. I'm sorry to the OP for not doing better on his consignment - we promise to do a better job in the future.

It's true that we made the conscious decision to continue to have items close on November 8. If we had decided to skip election day, due to the size of Auction #9, it would have pushed later items to close on the day before Thanksgiving which we know is a travel day for many people.

We need to establish a baseline, because if we start to skip dates due to unique events that may distract bidding, there could be an endless list of days that we select to skip (sporting events, award shows, popular television events, etc.). For this reason, it is our practice to refrain from items closing only on major holidays and days associated with major holidays.

On a side note, I don't think anyone could have predicted the fervor with which the American people followed the election results.

[clydepepper]

My experience with PWCC has only been as a buyer: won a few at good prices while paid too much or just missed others (including one earlier tonight).


Isn't the bottom line question for this thread-

Do you net more money consigning on EBAY at 10% or through AHs at 20%?


I cannot believe that ANY individual Auction House has as much market exposure as EBAY.

Am I wrong?



pe

[nrm1977]

On a side note, I don't understand why someone would send items to a ebay "auction house". I truly never understood that. I can understand if you don't have the time to list, ship etc but, why on earth do people do this? It just doesn't register with me.


Nick

[glchen]

Originally Posted by nrm1977

On a side note, I don't understand why someone would send items to a ebay "auction house". I truly never understood that. I can understand if you don't have the time to list, ship etc but, why on earth do people do this? It just doesn't register with me.


Nick

The turnaround time to get paid is much faster for ebay consignment shops. For example, PWCC has something like 11 auctions per year. Probstein is year round (e.g., they list immediately after they receive the items.) REA only has 2 auctions per year. They need a lead time to receive the items so that they can put it into their print catalog. Therefore even thought they pay out consigments lightning fast, if the items you want to sell don't align closely with their auction dates, you might need to wait around 6 months after you send your consignments to REA before you actually get paid. Other auction houses may have auctions much more frequently than REA, but then they often don't pay until 45 calendar days until after the auction close, and they still require a long lead time before their auction starts to get it into the catalog. Therefore, if you need to raise cash quickly, and want a consignment shop that typically has much lower fees than most auction houses, then ebay shops are often the best bet.

[Rich Klein]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

Leon,

I've always used auctionsniper.com and since I don't buy a lot through EBay, I have not shopped other auction sniper companies. I will look at using them in the future if free.

Brent, people were glued to their TV during the election night process. No matter who you voted for. Lisa was yelling at the TV and emotional roller coaster ride the entire night. The "champainge" bottles were opened after 3AM which by then all the PWCC auctions had closed.

Chris, did you ask Brent to stop your consignment listings? If yes ... you have a beef. If no, then you let it ride knowingly.

JC:

Steve did ask to stop the listings, the problem was he asked the day before the election instead of when the auction began. That is the issue I have with his complaint. By the time he got to November 7th the auction had been rolling for a while and I as the seller would not have cancelled said auction.

Now, if he had complained on the 1st day they were up then he would have a very valid point and everyone could have waited for the next auction

Rich

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by nrm1977

On a side note, I don't understand why someone would send items to a ebay "auction house". I truly never understood that. I can understand if you don't have the time to list, ship etc but, why on earth do people do this? It just doesn't register with me.


Nick

More cash, no work, and no dealing with the idiot eBay buyers is the main reasons. The idiot buyers are few and far between but really suck when you get one. I have no recent info, I do know a couple years ago you got a higher percentage of the final price from Brent or Rick because eBay was giving them huge discounts on their fees that they passed on to consignors.

[aljurgela]

Originally Posted by Leon

It might have brought lower prices but most people, myself included, still snipe. So when I see a card I really want I snipe it. Very rarely do I bid at the end anymore.

I typically snipe on anything of value. Al

[jfkheat]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

Isn't the bottom line question for this thread-

Do you net more money consigning on EBAY at 10% or through AHs at 20%?


I cannot believe that ANY individual Auction House has as much market exposure as EBAY.

Am I wrong?



pe

Very few auction houses charge a 20% fee to the sellers. Quite a few don't charge a sellers fee except on low value cards. Depending on the value of the card, some will give the seller a small percent of the buyers fee. James

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by nrm1977

On a side note, I don't understand why someone would send items to a ebay "auction house". I truly never understood that. I can understand if you don't have the time to list, ship etc but, why on earth do people do this? It just doesn't register with me.


Nick

There are a lot of reasons. eBay's selling policies scare some sellers who have no desire to deal with the specter of charge-backs and returns. Too many horror stories.

Raymond asked: "Do you net more money consigning on EBAY at 10% or through AHs at 20%?"

That's a really interesting question. I've found it cuts both ways.

First of all, the 10% and the 20% are not really the correct figures. With the charges for paypal added in, the eBay figure for a non-store seller is approximately 13%. As for the AHs, the issue is the combined cost of commission and BP. Most AHs now have to give out zero commission deals to get consignments but they still rake the BP off the top at anywhere from 15% on up to 23%. I was recently quoted a 15% commission and a 23% BP by an AH, and the rep refused to negotiate. I took my consignment elsewhere. If you can get a consignment deal at 0 commission and the BP is reasonable, does it really make sense to bother with eBay sales to save a few percentage points? For me, most of the time it does not.

Second, the raw math doesn't tell the whole story. Some bidders do not like to scour eBay for deals. I know several wealthy collectors who simply will not use eBay. I also know a number of tech-unfriendly collectors who will not participate in e-commerce. I was speaking with one over the weekend who said he received a catalog from an AH and was now going to bid by phone. eBay will miss those people.

Third, for some esoteric items of memorabilia, a good AH is a better choice for selling. I consigned a rare but obscure item to an AH recently rather than sell it on eBay and I was very happy with the marketing and the sale price. The relatively long lead on the catalog before the closing date and the motivated buyer base helped. I don't think it would have done as well on eBay with a seven day sale and bottom feeders. I also sold a rare item on eBay that I think benefited from the reach of eBay. It just depends.

[glchen]

Originally Posted by jfkheat

Very few auction houses charge a 20% fee to the sellers. Quite a few don't charge a sellers fee except on low value cards. Depending on the value of the card, some will give the seller a small percent of the buyers fee. James

James, but most auction houses charge around 20% BP, so the net to the consignor is 20% less than the realized price. Therefore in essence, the BP + seller's commission are the fees that the auction houses charge. On the flip side, PWCC charges 12% fee (this includes paypal) for graded cards that sell between $1-2K. (Their complete consignment rates are here: Link). Of course, lower consignment fees don't matter much if your consignments sell for 50% of VCP, which of course is the issue that Steve had, and if you believe that if you had gone to an AH, your items would have sold for a much higher price.

[slidekellyslide]

I accidentally listed items that ended on election night and totally forgot about them. They ended between 8 and 9 PM EST. I totally forgot about them as I was glued to the television all night...it wasn't until I was about to go to bed that I realized I had combined invoices I had to send. I was surprised that all of my items sold very well.

Only Scott mentioned it, but I too sure wouldn't be surprised that an honest (non shilling) consignor didn't do so well on baseball cards with PWCC.

[Baseball Bob]

Shucks! Why was'nt I online then? Could have grabbed some real bargains! Oh, yeah- I was using up my last box of kleenex crying about the election results!

No, seriously; that is a real bummer. PWCC cost you and themselves with that decision.