Just got an email from them. One Auction Per Week. Teletrade will conduct only one auction per week that will focus on offering selected, pre-screened, high-quality collector coins and paper money. Each auction will open for bidding on Monday at 3 p.m. ET and bidding will close the following Sunday at 10 p.m. ET. You will never bid against a hidden reserve. Our first weekly auction will take place the week of January 7–13, 2013. • Zero Seller’s Fees. Zero Buyback Fees. Zero Listing Fees. Qualified consignments will enjoy the lowest selling fees in the industry. If you are interested in consigning, please click here or call 800.949.COIN. Click here to download a PDF of our revised consignment form. • Updated Buyer’s Fee. Teletrade will change its buyer’s fee to an industry-standard 17.5% beginning with Auction 3412. • Gold Rewards. Following Auction 3407 — Monday, December 30, 2012 — Teletrade will discontinue the Gold Rewards program. All previously earned Gold Rewards points will be honored through June 30, 2013, or until the expiration date arrives, whichever comes first. As always, Teletrade customers can continue to expect industry leading customer service, professional images of every lot offered, free auction archives, and free shipping of auction purchases for first-time buyers. And as we prepare to bring 2012 to a close, we are committed to providing you with even more improved opportunities for buying and selling certified coins and currency in the upcoming year. ------------------------------------------------ So TT is: Dropping down to 1 auction per week, that runs overnight. Raising the buyer's fee 2.5%. Getting rid of the no buyers fee auction that is held on Tuesday night. Getting rid of gold rewards. HOW IS ANY OF THIS AN IMPROVEMENT?! I suggest everyone sending an email to info@teletrade.com expressing your thoughts for these "wonderful changes".
I just read that e-mail Tim. Maybe it's cheaper and more efficient to do things this way? I'll miss the Tuesday night auction but lately (at least for me) Tuesday night has been more like 'junk nite'..........
Teletrade is known as an outlet for dreck and as such they are losing a lot of customers. I would assume they are trying to change that.
You aint kidding.....if i wanted cheapo modern coins slabbed I could just go to my local coin store and search the $1.00 slab bin.
I've heard that but I've pulled some nice stuff off of there. I do know that a lot of people would use Teletrade winnings as fodder for their e-bay stores/auctions.
To each his own and teletrade certainly has a right to make money but I am pretty much done with them at this point. I felt their buyer fees were already ridiculous, but raising them to 17.5% is 'adios' time for me. In my opinion they should be catering to customers rather than acting like they are doing us a favor. The $8 minimum is also crazy....I buy a coin for $12/market value, and get bashed by an almost 100% markup to $20? No thanks. The Tuesday auctions almost look like a teletrade inside joke. /Rant off. Good luck to them, the have a right to make a buck, just not my cup of tea anymore.
Kind of thinkin' the same. Back to Heritage.......better selection, and if I have to pay the price, well, so be it. Shopping for bargains just went out the window......
Yep, i just found it odd that teletrade would consider a competitor as the "Industry Standard" (per their email) and an excuse to jack prices. I would have thought they would carve their own price niche. They did have some nice coins but the fun of it was bargain hunting. Why would a seller adjust his/her price point down by 17% and why would a buyer adjust theirs up 17% - i can buy many of the same slabbed coins from ebay now for cheaper, especially when you add in the other teletrade "fees" such as shipping and per coin premium. For slabbed bullion, I can go to apmex, etc. Maybe teletrade is doing so well they feel they can become more 'exclusive' in order to cater to a higher-end market but that seems like an odd stance in the current economic environment.
I suppose it depends on what you collect. Even at 17.5%, a lot of the slabbed Kennedy's end up selling lower than most of the stuff on eBay. Everybody thinks they can make a fortune off eBay, and not without cause, what with all the bidiots. I've found much better prices overall with a few online dealers for my collection. Buy a few slabs and combine S/H. One dealer even dropped the S/H altogether, and I was paying a good 25% less PCGS list. One told me that he couldn't get people to steal modern slabs, except for the registry-level stuff. All the "pricey" coins I want in my series top off at 300. Whether or not I want to pay a 5o-dollar buyers fee on that is going to depend on how much I want the piece, and whether I can get it somewhere else for less. So I'll keep an eye on things of course, but it's going to be a wandering eye.
It will be interesting to see the change happening. But they have a long way to go to compete with Heritage in terms of worthy inventory.
Well I may be an idiot (I've been called that a time or two) but I really liked TeleTrade. I just sent them an e-mail expressing my displeasure. Especially ditching the rewards program. And extra-especially for getting rid of it with almost no notice. I could have dropped a few more bucks there and gotten to the MS65 Peace dollar level. Oh well. I find it hard to believe that they were losing much money at all with the rewards program - especially if they're raising fees to 17.5% My message will probably fall on deaf ears, so I guess I'll be trying other venues. Any suggestions besides Heritage? Do they have a 'rewards' program?
And am I reading that right - the auctions now last for seven days?! I'll have plenty of time to contemplate this: http://www.teletrade.com/coins/lot.asp?auction=3408&lot=1729
I can see for people who buy inexpensive items that the BP increase and the $8 min is a deal breaker, but for more expensive items people will just adjust their bids down a couple percent to compensate. Heritage and Stack's both have 17.5% buyers fees, and I don't see them losing any sleep or sales over it. If you are not already figuring tax, shipping and BP into your bids before you bid, you might want to start. Only downside is that you probably won't win as many coins because your bids will be more in line with the others that do figure all these expenses into their max. I will say that they should have long ago gone to the format that Stack's and Heritage use that shows what the next bid will be with BP included. That way I don't have to do as much math.
