What would YOU like to see in a online auction?

[sterlingfox]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

I am still waiting for anyone (from a post in another thread) who runs a business to come forward and tell me they can succeed on gross margins that you guys think an auction house can make it on. In this thread I have seen suggestions of no commission and low buyer's premiums coupled with free shipping. What is a low buyer's premium? 15 %, 10%???

You can't run a business with gross margins that low, and I don't anticipate anyone who actually owns a business of any sort, to contradict that.

Brockelman Auctions has a 12.5% buyer's premium and VERY cheap shipping. They are still in business, and doing very well I suspect.

[Snapolit1]

I do like the intelligent informative write ups that some AHs have. Al of course comes to mind immediately. What I don't need is breathless hyperbole about "breath taking pasteboards," "one of the greatest extant" and claims that things are one of the hobby's best examples when it's the 15th one PDA 7 I've seen for sale since June. Good informative write ups are good. Hype and long recitations about how important Babe Ruth was to the game of baseball are a little silly. If you are using a thesaurus, bad.

[T205 GB]

delete.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by T205 GB

They used to be 10% with 0% for consignments.

There's a reason they "used to" and even then they weren't shipping for free. And please don't think I'm somehow ripping them, their margins are pretty much the smallest I've seen. If they can make it work at those numbers they are paragons of efficiency or something.

Let's look at their September auction.

Approximately 650 lots, let's say they averaged $200 per item, and I think that's more than fair when you see how many no sales they have, that means they took in $130,000.

so if the 12.5% is all they're taking in, they grossed $16,250.

How much did their custom platform and website cost? Shipping costs besides labor? How much does their real-estate cost them, office, warehouse etc...

How many salaries have to be paid out of that. Graphic designers? Shippers? Customer Service? How about the owner?

How many auctions do they run each year four? That's a GROSS profit of $65,000 That's not a business, that's a hobby. Out of that comes ALL the aforementioned expenses before any profit is made.

Again I'm waiting for any business owner to tell me that's a sustainable model. How many of you would be willing to work for $65,000 a year, let alone try and run a business off of it???

[darwinbulldog]

If the card is worth $125, and you have a 20% buyer's premium and an $8 shipping charge, the bidding should open at $25 or $50, not $100.

[packs]

There is no reason to charge a seller a consignment fee if you're charging the buyer a buyer's premium. Please justify that for me with a logical reason that doesn't boil down to "so I can make money" and I'll happily consign.

[EYECOLLECTVINTAGE]

Originally Posted by rhettyeakley

I prefer to see auction houses run by people who know a great deal about the subject matter, in fact I would consider that an absolute necessity.

Being a relative newcomer to the field doesn’t give anyone a free pass to open an auction house, what exactly would you provide to your consignors? Not trying to be rude but you have asked some pretty rudimentary questions over the past few months and not sure why you think this would be a great idea. Again, if you you decide to take this on I wish you luck I just don’t know that this would be a successful venture for you.

For a single item I would agree. The only time I could see charging a sellers fee is if there is a lot of work involved.

Example would be organizing lots into making sense for buyers.

Say you're given 2000 cards of all different years. In order to maximize profit, you are going to have to strategize and come up with a plan to make the lot more attractive which would most likely involve breaking them down into smaller lots and taking detailed scans.

Another example would be a huge lot of stubs. In order to maximize profits, you're gonna want to list each date as well as any noteworthy events to help the lots garner as much attention and money as possible.

Would you agree with that?

[Orioles1954]

Originally Posted by EYECOLLECTVINTAGE

For a single item I would agree. The only time I could see charging a sellers fee is if there is a lot of work involved.

Example would be organizing lots into making sense for buyers.

Say you're given 2000 cards of all different years. In order to maximize profit, you are going to have to strategize and come up with a plan to make the lot more attractive which would most likely involve breaking them down into smaller lots and taking detailed scans.

Another example would be a huge lot of stubs. In order to maximize profits, you're gonna want to list each date as well as any noteworthy events to help the lots garner as much attention and money as possible.

Would you agree with that?

I would think most on this site would have a minimum 20+ years in the hobby. If you lack experience, why not just go the eBay consignment route and build trust that way?

[darwinbulldog]

It probably goes without saying if you aren't Hunt, but it would be nice to include a scan of the back of the card too.

And anything you can do to attract consignments of types that haven't shown up at auction since the Heritage Leon Luckey type card auction would be appreciated.

[Orioles1954]

Originally Posted by aquarian sports cards

there's a reason they "used to" and even then they weren't shipping for free. And please don't think i'm somehow ripping them, their margins are pretty much the smallest i've seen. If they can make it work at those numbers they are paragons of efficiency or something.

Let's look at their september auction.

Approximately 650 lots, let's say they averaged $200 per item, and i think that's more than fair when you see how many no sales they have, that means they took in $130,000.

So if the 12.5% is all they're taking in, they grossed $16,250.

How much did their custom platform and website cost? Shipping costs besides labor? How much does their real-estate cost them, office, warehouse etc...

How many salaries have to be paid out of that. Graphic designers? Shippers? Customer service? How about the owner?

How many auctions do they run each year four? That's a gross profit of $65,000 that's not a business, that's a hobby. Out of that comes all the aforementioned expenses before any profit is made.

Again i'm waiting for any business owner to tell me that's a sustainable model. How many of you would be willing to work for $65,000 a year, let alone try and run a business off of it???

+1. There is a definite plus/minus factor to one person "boutique" auctions and multi-person organizations.

[buymycards]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

There's a reason they "used to" a

How much did their custom platform and website cost? Shipping costs besides labor? How much does their real-estate cost them, office, warehouse etc...

How many salaries have to be paid out of that. Graphic designers? Shippers? Customer Service? How about the owner?

How many auctions do they run each year four? That's a GROSS profit of $65,000 That's not a business, that's a hobby. Out of that comes ALL the aforementioned expenses before any profit is made.

Don't forget, after the expenses are deducted from the $65K, you will need to pay both the employers and the employees share of Social Security and Medicare, which is around 15%, plus 15% or more in Federal taxes, plus, some state taxes, which in Wisconsin, could be around 5%.

[steve B]

I think in some areas there's room for a smaller, more local auction. Halls did it for years- maybe 20+? I forget when the first ones were.

That being said, they were live and added online, and had a TON of work to get each auction done while rounding up more stuff for the next auction.

The guys to listen to the most are the ones doing it or who have done it in the past. Like Barry Sloate. (Always nice stuff, unfortunately also too nice for my budget, but that's auctions for you. - I was also too disorganized to bid. )

A couple things were just brushed on, and you might not get much advice on them either because it's the stuff that really makes an auction, is finding stuff and a client list.
Getting new stuff is a long process. Lots of networking, lots of asking if someone was interested in selling some stuff. Maybe years of waiting. I was a Halls customer since 1977, and ran into the first collection that was both available to me and that I knew was more than I could handle in 2009. I finally consigned some stuff of my own in 2010. (Mostly extra stuff that I felt had to go to make room for my daughter. ) Yes, they took a pretty hefty consignment fee. But I trusted them enough to lot the carload of marginal stuff to maximize the return, and in the end the biggest disappointment was one card that want for about what I could get on Ebay. Other things went for a lot more than they'd bring on ebay and I did no work except to hand them boxes from storage and give them a brief description - Box of cards that used to book for something in 1990- that sort of stuff. (The other collection did very well and I got a nice little surprise bonus for recommending them) < Pay attention to that little bit! If someone basically hands you a 30-60K collection take care of them once you start getting profit from it.

On the sales end.
If getting eyes on stuff through here was all it took, then why bother doing it another way? No overhead of a website and platform, and the same end result. NOPE! One thin that's important is developing a client list. I'd be truly shocked if any of the active auction houses offered any help at all here. The client list is where the real money is. Sure, Ebay gets you seen by thousands, but not all of them are buyers, and not many are buyers with a decent budget. How many of your Ebay customers are repeat customers? When I was selling there the answer for me was "almost none".
The good auctions keep advertising the auctions to their list, Halls sent me an auction - flyer? list? I can't really call it a catalog - for a very long time, even through a several years long period of almost complete inactivity. Towards the end that was costing them a dollar in postage every month. (I felt guilty about not bidding all the time, but kids are expensive!) Plus the envelope, the list itself and their time.
The really big auctions will sometimes call a major client to give them a bit of advance notice on things they know the client really should buy. Followed by a sales pitch along the lines of "this really needs to be in your collection, it's coming 5 months from now. I've never gotten one of those calls, I'm not a big enough fish for that.

Bottom line, it's a ton of work, and you need a really big network and a lot of persistence.
If you do it, good luck!

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by sterlingfox

Brockelman Auctions has a 12.5% buyer's premium and VERY cheap shipping. They are still in business, and doing very well I suspect.

A. Very Cheap isn't free

B. do they charge NO seller's commissions on all items???

[sterlingfox]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

A. Very Cheap isn't free

B. do they charge NO seller's commissions on all items???

A. Very cheap shipping (at or near actual cost) is what I'm looking for - not free
B. No seller's commission on all items, YES! Here's a quote directly from the website:

Sellers win with Brockelman Auctions. We offer a sellers fee of zero % on lots consigned. The result being sellers receive more net dollars due to lower commissions and higher bidding activity.

Goes to show that this type of business model (low buyer's premium, no seller's commission, and cheap shipping) exists and works well. Wish others would follow suit.