Coin auctions without BP?

Besides eBay, are there any other online auction sites to bid on coins?

Both Teletrade and HA have BP (buyers premiums). Looking for a site that does not.

 

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Auctions are a business. They promote the sales, present the items for sale, make catalogs, contact potential buyers (and sellers) and are a venue to buy and sell items. The buyer's premium is how they make their money. If you find a place that doesn't charge a premium, how do you think they stay in business?

 

By making the seller pay it, like ebay.

 

Teletrade tuesday auctions have no BP

 

The point is someone pays.

 

Maybe it's just me...but I think Teletrade's and HA's fee structure is set up to discourage buying and selling of inexpensive items.

 

It separates the wheat from the chaff.

 

It's just you. The fee structure is set up to pay for the cost of doing business and to make a profit for the owners of the auction house. The discouragement of inexpensive items is simply a byproduct of the fee structure

 

Yep, I get tired of looking at pages and pages of people's pocket change up for sale.

 

Search craigslist.com.

Only thing you need to do is haggle, and haggle good.

 

...and meet the seller in a public location.

 

And pack a 'heater'........

 

Or bring a rabid pitbull :thumb:

 

Fees (and shipping, etc) and how they are charged do not matter, just adjust your bids to account for the extra costs. If you are willing to spend $105 on a coin and there are no fees then bid $105, if there is a 5% buyers fee then bid $100, if there is a 5% buyers fee and $5 shipping then bid $95.

 

Detecto,

That is just slick marketing. In reality, BP's don't exist, the seller takes both the SP and the BP right on the chin. It just sounds better to the seller to tell him his premium is 10% rather than saying the SP is 25%. Think about it, when the buyers are bidding, the total price including BP is clearly listed, so if a buyer bids $1000, he knows darn well he is in fact bidding $1150. This is all taken into consideration, see for the buyer it is only the final price including all fees that counts. So if the buyer can get the coins for $1050 elsewhere, he will not bid $1000 for it on HA. The buyer adjusts his bid downwards to compensate for the BP.

To put in better perspective, what if the buyers premium was 50%, does that mean that buyers would be stupid to bid on that site? No, there would still be plenty of buyers, they would just be adjusting their bids downward.

 

I agree with all of these posts. Who pays the fee is simply a shell game. If the total fees the AH need are 25%, intelligent buyers and sellers don't really care who pays it. If its all seller fees and a $100 coin, the buyer pays $100 and seller gets $75. If its split 50/50 buyer/seller fee, the buyer bids $87.50 and seller still gets $75.

The only losers are the suckers who don't calculate the BP into their bids. Its because of these suckers that BP were invented.

Don't be that sucker and you are fine.

 

Even though our fees are low, for cheaper coins, we don't make money selling them - we do it more as a service to the consignor and the bidder. We look at the big picture and averages more than making money on a single coin.

When we were planning GreatCollections - it was tough to work out the fee structure. One of the considerations was not having a buyer's fee at all, and charging the seller more in fees - I went with in between instead and I think it works the best. If I didn't charge a buyer's fee, I would not be able to secure as many good coins in our auctions.

Ian Russell
GreatCollections

 

Why this attitude of "everyone making a profit is ripping people off, except me of course, I make an honest profit"?

 

Ian: I really like your GreatCollections site and have a good number of active bids going for tonight. It is great to see you posting here on CoinTalk. :smile TC