Bertolami raises buyers fee again

I just did due diligence and read the terms of sale for the upcoming Bertolami Auction 87. the buyer's premium is now 26% (!)

I won 4 lots from their last auction of ancient coins and paid 24% buyers premium. This was the highest premium I had ever paid, and this was up 2% from my most recent previous winnings from Bertolami.

I will adjust my bids accordingly, and I do not fault them. It is an auction and everyone pays the same buyers premium. But if you are not careful and expect the typical 20-22%, you may be unpleasantly surprised at the invoice totals.

 

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Bertolami is an auction house that i never ever want to hear of again, an absolute bunch of amateurs! Won a coin at one of their recent auctions , paid immediately 360 euros for the invoice, coin was not shipped for 3 weeks, though it was one of the first lots of the auction, i contacted them to ask what is going on and my coin was only shipped after 5 weeks , when i told them that i'm going to take them to court!

 

That is an absurd fee

 

26% is ridiculous...it amazes me that their consignors are willing to put up with that.

 

I personally have had nothing but good experiences with Bertolami in the past. They have increasingly good material, their descriptions are accurate, and my winnings have always been promptly shipped (within reason. 2020 has lots of obstacles caused by the pandemic). I just think their buyer's fees are outside of the mainstream and may catch some by surprise.

 

I have never bought from auctions like that. Why is there a buyers fee?

 

World-wide Coins of California still does not have any buyer's fee, but Jim Elmen specializes in world coins, so no ancients there.

 

Auction houses typically charge fees, or commissions, to both buyers and consignors. That's how they mainly fund their operations.

I remember, many years back, when commissions were around 10%. The times, they are a-changing.

 

It's just part of how they make their money to support the business. The commission is split between the buyer and the consignor. I remember many years ago a buyers fee was unheard of. Auctions only charged a commission to the consignor. Rather suddenly, the large auction houses began to charge small commissions to buyers and eventually all major auctions jumped on the bandwagon. I think it started at 10-15%. Since that time, there has been a reliably consistency for most auctions of between 18-20%. So reliable I often didn't even look at the terms. Looks like there is movement in this level again so it's important to read the terms.

Ultimately it's a simple math problem. Commission is part of the cost of the coin that needs to be considered before the bid is placed. Unfortunately if the buyer is using a web auction archive service such as ACSearch or CoinArchives as a basis for estimating the current market value for an issue, it become a bit more complicated because these sites only reveal hammer prices.

 

I have not dealt with them for past two years. I had won a FDC Anastasius AV Tremissis/ I sent them a bank draft to pay for this. Three weeks later they informed me that I had not paid for the lot. I sent them a photo copy of the draft. Two weeks after that they sent a nasty e-mail, threatening my repution. So, I sent a bank wire/ and asked my bank to cancel the draft. My bank informed me three weeks later, that they had cashed it five weeks ago. To make a sad story short, they did refund the $, but no apology.....
Roma on the otherhand, received one of my drafts, 3 months late due to a sloppy postal service. However, they where really nice and said they would wait for it to arrive.

 

I’m afraid I’ve had a similar experience: Had to ask for an invoice, and had to wait 2 months for the book to be delivered. That’s my first experience with Bertolami. If they want 26%, it is likely to be the last.

 

If all consignors/buyers thought completely rational, it wouldn't matter if you have a 15% consignor's commission and a 15% buyer's commission, or if you have a 0% consignor's commission and a 30% buyer's commission. Bidders would adjust their bids and in the end, everything was the same.

But, the fewest people are completely rational. Combine that with auction houses competing for consignments and offering ever lower consignor fees, and you get exactly what we have now: increasing buyer's commissions and decreasing consignor's commissions (in many cases they are 0% or even negative now, meaning the consignor gets more than the hammer price).

From an auction house point of view, if you want to stay competitive, you have to go with that movement or you have a disadvantage.

In art auctions, a buyer's premium of 30-35% is common today. I wonder, how far this can go.

 

I don't even look at their auctions...

 

It has been years since I have consigned any coins for auction so I was not aware that this was happening, but it makes sense to do this in order to attract better material from consignors. I assume the consignor fee is variable depending on the desirability of the consigned material as I have never seen the consignment fees posted on any website. I'd be interested to hear what people have been paying for consignment to major auction firms.

 

I’m honestly kind of surprised auction houses don’t consider progressive buyer fees as a way to make up the gap of lowering seller fees.... or to just make more money.

If someone can shell out $100k for a coin, they can afford a higher buyer fee % than someone paying $1k. And let’s be real, people spending that kind of money with an auction house probably get more “white glove” service than most so paying a little more makes sense (to me at least )

 

Buyers pay auction companies’ expenses in addition to a portion of consignor fees as mentioned in this thread and others.

Consider as well that many buyers like receiving their “free” printed catalogues on glossy paper and fancy packaging, both of which raise auction companies’ expenses.

For myself, I’d prefer to take say USD 50 off my first purchase over a certain amount for not ever receiving printed catalogues.

 

Heritage charges 25% for political items. When you add my local sales tax, that gets the over the hammer price up to almost 36% for me. I've told them I can't afford that.

Some people claim that buyers' fees don't matter. You break back you bids to reflect the buyers' fees. That's true for dealers because they have the discipline to drop out when the total bid gets too high.

But there are lots of collectors who bid as if it's not there. That's why the auction houses charge them. They are upping their bottom line and telling consignors that they getting more.

Buyers' fees are bad for bidders. The higher they get, the more likely it is that I will not bid in that company's auctions. There are firms who charge no buyers' fee, and they get more respect from me.

 

I've bought a few coins from on-line auctions. Mostly good experiences but not all. That said, it always chaps my backside to pay the buyers premium. Operating costs couldn't have gone up hundreds of % to justify the rates, especially when you consider today its basically software and its a pretty automated process. What really gets me is the typical disclaimer is "as is, where is" and "NO REFUNDS". If they put more time into correctly displaying and describing the item, I'd feel that they had at least did some real work to earn the fee. Therefore, I set my limit, considering all fees etc and base my bid on that to retain value if I'm the winner. All that said and a comment on "as is, where is", I did successfully exchanged a purchase once I provided proof that they sold me a counterfeit Silver Eagle. They were pretty quick to offer an exchange. I suspect because the alternative was potential legal action, although, I made no mention of action in my correspondence with them. I thanked them for correcting the issue but will no longer be a customer.

 

A remarkably steep fee for a house that seems to do no research based on the abundance of fakes.

 

I just live with the high fees. Part of the reality of collecting ancients these days.