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Auctioning your cards at Mastronet
hench1
Posts: 116 ✭
I was at the National yesterday, talking with a major auction house about the recent buyer premium hikes that Mastro and others have imposed.
Just a word to the wise to those who want to sell their items through an auction house. Negotiate the seller's premium to ZERO. I didn't when I sold my T205 set last year and now realize that I could have put the cards on ebay and made quite a bit more than I netted with Mastro. If you do consign to an auction house, let the buyers pay the freight. The auction houses aren't doing YOU a favor-they need your material-YOU are doing THEM a favor by giving them a chance to make big bucks selling your collections.
Just a word to the wise to those who want to sell their items through an auction house. Negotiate the seller's premium to ZERO. I didn't when I sold my T205 set last year and now realize that I could have put the cards on ebay and made quite a bit more than I netted with Mastro. If you do consign to an auction house, let the buyers pay the freight. The auction houses aren't doing YOU a favor-they need your material-YOU are doing THEM a favor by giving them a chance to make big bucks selling your collections.
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I really dont know if Mastro's strategy will work out for them in the long run.
I have heard of people getting reduced or even 0% sellers fees on items that are far from spectacular.
It used to be that only special items would have such discounts, now lots of people are getting those 0% sellers fees.
What happens when you have something really unique (wagner etc) do you ask for 105% of the selling price?
Its a spiraling mistake, good for the cosigner, but it hurts the buyer.
Premier auctions bring out the very best material and you are dealing with the best people in the bussiness, therefore they can demand a little more money, but with the reputation of established ebay sellers known for quality items and with the emergence of niche auction sites, it really becomes a balancing act between what your items sells for vs what you get paid for.
Groucho Marx
<< <i>The auction houses aren't doing YOU a favor-they need your material-YOU are doing THEM a favor by giving them a chance to make big bucks selling your collections. >>
Amen
Since i am mostly a buyer i dont apriciatte paying more, sure i could adjust my bid...but regardless it feels like they are draining you even harder.
The seller is the one who is benefiting by getting a focused audience and having their items displayed in catalogs websites etc.
Now i have to pay more for the " previlege" of buying their cards while they pay even less.
if the fees keep increasing, collectors will simply network and sell and buy to eachother and we might not see cards for many years before they appear again.
Groucho Marx
"Uhhh, yeah.....you're gonna have to pay 17.5% more if you want to drive you're new car home today."
I believe the response you give is...."Go F*%@ yourself"!!! Yet, auction buyers, are expected to bend over after paying good money and dig deeper.
Can you imagine the fallout if Ebay started charging a buyer's fee? All hell would break loose!
My vote is a 5% seller's fee on all items...no buyer's fee. 5% isn't bad for having nothing invested in the items you are selling....except for advertising.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents for what it's worth!
Tim
Always looking for Topps Salesman Samples, pre '51 unopened packs, E90-2, E91a, N690 Kalamazoo Bats, and T204 Square Frame Ramly's
The top bidder could have gone much higher, the trick is finding this top bidder. In our niche hobby it would be possible to do some networking.
anyways...since big auction houses are now willing to drop the usual 15% on the seller that coupled with the 15% on the buyers used to net them 30% they will try to make up for it by continuing to jack up the buyer's fee and making the lots bigger and more expensive that way they limit catalog space and could jam more stuff in order to make up for loss profit.
Groucho Marx
You want to sell the house you live in, assume for this exercise you owe nothing on the home:
Now lets sell it with a real estate agent:
asking price is 200,000.00
sales commision (buyers agent and sellers agent 6% = 12,000.00
closing costs your side (mandatory, not giving any seller concession) = 4,000.00
net check to you: 184,000.00
now without the agent ( your side, and yes you could try to not pay any agent fees at all, but might be difficult to not pay buyers side) buyers agent only: 6,000.00
net check to you is: 190,000.00
now lets translate it to cards:
collection: 10,000.00
mastro charges 17.5% your set sells for 10,000 including the buyers premium: net check to you : 8500.00 approx ( your set sold for 8500 + 1487.50 buyers premium)
now you sell the same thing on ebay:
reserve is met at 10,000.00
you accepted paypal and with the FVF from ebay and listing fees you net: 9200.00 (give or take a few dollars)
so you gave up 700.00 if you went mastro's way ( 9200 (ebay) - 8500 (mastro)) or you could ask yourself, would I get 700.00 more on mastro becuse of the wide and supposed affluent audience they reach?
you would need at least a 9200.00 bid on your items on mastro ( 10,810.00 w/ bp) (remember the higher bid also increases the 17.50%)
so I think it really comes down to choices.
To lose control (reserve price, higher starting price) is a huge gamble, what if it goes for 6500.00 on mastro? there is nothing you can do other than lick your wounds.
but as you can see, you have ways to eliminate costs, and risks, in both examples, and yes I know you could lower your costs by not accepting paypal as well, but you also may lose the person that wants your item and is looking for the protection from the credit card, or has the room on the card, but not 10K in cash at the moment available.
Either way you look at it you pay, either thru a lower bid by the buyer or you pay the fees to sell, I personally dont like to have someone pay a higher fee for my item AND I also take on huge risk when selling something.
just my 2 cents.
Link To Scanned 1952 Topps Cards Set is now 90% Complete Plus Slideshows of the 52 Set
For cards (especially PSA graded cards), the final price paid by the buyer (including the 17.5% hammer fee) is going to be very close whether the card(s) are sold on ebay or by a major auction house. This leads me to believe that ebay is the way to go. The exceptions to this would be a T206 Wagner or a PSA 8 1952 Mantle or cards in that category.
For other items (game used uniforms, bats, memoriabilia, probably even autographs), you'll normally come out ahead with the major auction house. I think there's an inherent peace of mind (right or wrong) with the authenticity of such an item when it comes from a major auction house. If you have a game used jersey of a Hall-of-Famer and you put it on ebay, it doesn't matter what your feedback is, if you've never sold a game used jersey before, people will be skeptical. If Leland's sells it for you and they say it's real, that's generally all people need to hear. Also, and this is just my opinion, I sense that people who are interested in HOF game used jerseys are more likely to look at the Leland's auction than they are to look on ebay daily.
A few more thoughts: (1) From my experience, if you have a large lot of cards or even a complete set, the one problem with the major auction houses is that they seldom have the space for a thorough write up and detailed scans. Depending on your computer skills, you can give a lot more info and display a lot more (and more detailed scans) in an ebay listing. (2) To the credit of the major auction houses, the catalogs they have been putting out lately are simply outstanding (almost collector's items).
Good luck!
-detroitfan2
P.S. Great summary by IJustLoveCards
I also consigned a group of autographed balls, broken into four categories (they almost all had inscriptions): HOF, CY, MVP, ROY. Without my knowledge or consent, the ROY balls failed to appear in the major catalogue auction that winter, but rather turned up later in their dinky "Classic" auction. I took a beating on the balls (OUCH! That's GOTTA hurt!). It won't happen again.
I sold a large group of high grade cards privately this year, with much better results. Better prices for me, better prices for the buyer, NO AUCTION FEES. The 20% or so bite was left out of the equation, much to the benefit of both buyer and seller. I think as more and more collectors network, we can make our deals without the ever more greedy auction houses taking a huge slice of the pie.
If I was selling a single card with monster value though, I would probably lean towards Mastronet - but I doubt I'll ever own a card in that league.
Bosox1976
Always looking for Topps Salesman Samples, pre '51 unopened packs, E90-2, E91a, N690 Kalamazoo Bats, and T204 Square Frame Ramly's
In my opinion if you put all of the work into completing the set, why give it to Mastronet to sell, when you could just as easily do it yourself and make a few more bucks.
Certainly Mastro has not built up his business to this size by making all of this consigners rich and not themselves.
The only instance I would consider a large auction house is if you were trying to sell off a really rare or high dollar ticket item that his collecting base might be able to afford.
Check out my ebay auctions listed under seller ID: jeej
<< <i>I was just reviewing Mastro's rules and noticed the 17.5% buyer's premium. I always thought 15% was absurd. Who are these joker's kidding? >>
I don't know why anyone would ever use them for selling cards
Hunt is 10%
Robert Edwards, 19th Century Only, Lipset,Superior,Collectable Classics,Memory Lane and Mile High are 15%
Lelands, Goodwin and Mastro are 17.5%
I think the reason the buyers premiums are going up is because increased competition between auction houses is causing the sellers premium to go down, be eliminated entirely, or go negative.
Always looking for Topps Salesman Samples, pre '51 unopened packs, E90-2, E91a, N690 Kalamazoo Bats, and T204 Square Frame Ramly's
Although I share everyone's outrage, my response is, rather than react in anger and not participate in an auction that might have something rare and valuable that you need, simply take your best bid and divide it by (1+buyers premium) and use that as your new high bid.
For example, if $100 is my max bid and the buyer's fee is 17.5%, your new max bid is 100/(1.175) = about $85. Then if you win at $85, it comes to about $100 after the buyer's fee is added in. You can adjust this formula for each auction, depending on the buyers fee.
This method will keep you within your budget and not be burned by a hugh buyer premium at the end.
My own example: One year ago at Mastro's August 2004 auction, my 1956 Ted Williams PSA 9 sold for $8,888 + $1,333 juice from the buyer (SMR was $6,500). A few months earlier, I tried to sell it on eBay with only 150 or so feedback and only a third of that from selling. My reserve wasn't met and the top bid was $2,000 below SMR. A combination of uninspiring feedback and well, sometimes the big money is watching eBay and sometimes it's not. The big money is ALWAYS watching Mastro.
That said, I think 17.5% for either the seller or buyer (never mind both!) is far too much and I would not pay it. I would reduce my bids to account for the non-negotiable buyer's fee, and I would only sell if I could negotiate the seller's fee down to 5% or even zero if my item was likely to generate a lot of interest.
Certain items are not meant to be put into these auctions. However, if I ever elected to sell certain extremely rare or valuable cards, I would absolutely turn to one of these auction houses, negociate the seller premium and let them take a 17.5% buyer premium on the sales price because I know that I would still wind up getting more for the item than I would through eBay and probably through a private sale, as some items sell for far more than anyone would ever expect them to except the top two bidders. One thing that is nice about the bigger houses is they bring out big money buyers who would likely not see the card on eBay. A wealthy buyer whose collection is composed strictly of items valued at $5-10K and up is far more likely to go through the major auction houses than constantly hunt for similar items on eBay.
Another thing about these fees that not a single person has mentioned yet in this thread is that it costs these companies, especially Mastro and REA, a consider amount of money to produce the auction catalogs and they mail them out to each active member at no charge. If anyone has not seen a Mastro or REA catalog, these are full-color, high gloss 200-300 page books, and Mastro generally has 2 for each auction. They also take very nice professional quality photo's of each item & they will send you additional photo's if you would like them.
-Josh