Heritage Buyers Premium

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

I think we all take the buyers premium into account when we bid but with a higher premium do we still end up pay more for cards--I think so. For example, let's say there is a card coming up that you want. Let's say you are willing to pay $1000 for it. The current bid is at $750 and the next bump is to $800, do you make the bump? At a 20% BP the total is $960, which is under $1000 so you bid. At a 22% buyers premium the total $976 so you also still bid, but now because of the change in BP you have paid (assuming you win the card) $16 more. Maybe at times the higher BP results in the bid exceeding the person's cutoff while the lower BP would have allowed for a bump. While theoretically possible I think most bidders have a little flex in their cap and therefore, I think in most cases the higher BP just results in more money spent on the same card. Because of this my preference is always to favor the auction house with the lower BP.

If the most I'm willing to pay for a card at Heritage is $1,000, the most I would bid is $1,000 -7% sales tax -$25 shipping -22% buyers' premium, so the most I would bid is $745. Previously (i.e., with a 20% buyers' premium) I would have been happy to place the $750 bid, but in this case I would not. But the key issue that isn't addressed in your post is that the high bids you're invited to top now will be systematically lower than they previously would have been because the other bidders are making the same calculations that I and the rest of us are, whereas it's just sort of implicit in your presentation that the identical $750 leading bid is sitting there waiting to be topped regardless of what the buyers' premium for the auction is.