A lot has been said about Heritage Auctions upping its buyers fee from 17.5 percent to 20 percent in recent months. I put in a bid this afternoon for a coin on Great Collections — my first one in a while. I noticed that what had been a 10 percent fee has been upped to 12.5 percent — unless one pays by check, e-check or wire, where it remains 10 percent. Hadn’t seen any mention of it here so I thought I’d point it out.
Yea they followed along with the same increase not to long after the other two did. For some reason they seemed to get a free pass from the crowd being critical of the BP raise which admittedly may just be because the other sites have a lot more bidders. In the end it's really the sellers that are getting hurt.
The other sites have more bidders, sure. But GC is still 7.5% less than the others. I'm guessing that's why they got a free pass.
The other reason for the "free pass" was that the fee used to be 10% regardless of payment method. Many dealers said they had to pay via check/wire, so they were at a disadvantage against credit card buyers. Now that the check/wire is 10% for all (and 12.5% for credit cards), the field has been evened and the dealers are happy. In my experiences (as someone who is not a dealer and uses a credit card at GC), I have not seen much change in what items sell for (at least in the categories that I follow) and some auctions seem to go for more now (basically if something used to go for $100+10% now I still see it go for the same $100 before b.p.).
Maybe it’s purely chance and maybe it’s what I’m bidding on - or maybe both - but I’ve scored three nice steals on Heritage since they upped their fee. I wonder if their higher fee is discouraging some of the participation.
Great Collections is very fair/ I pay the 10% since I send them a bank cheque. I-Numis/ France also has a 10% fee.With the way prices have escalated over past 20 years, these auction firms are making a killing. A coin that realized 40 Reichsmarks(10US) in 1936 German auction, sold for $400 US in 1980. It sold for 4500 Swiss Francs in 2018. So the comm. fee (profit) would increase with market prices. At 20% it would have been $2 in 36/ $8 in 80/ and a whopping $900 in 2018. Oh, that coin was a mint state Papal States/ AV Fiorino di camera/ Roma Mint/ Pope Alessandro VI 1492-1503 aka Rodrigo Borgia, Lucretia's Dad.
Since they deal with a lot of lower priced items I think they had to do it as the margins just aren't enough when factoring in the fees they pay to accept credit cards. They are still amazingly priced and a great option for both buying and selling IMO I just had a real successful sale there two sundays ago. A coin that sat on ebay $850 or best offer for 2 months without even an offer sold for $968+ buyers fee, $300 more than I would have sold for on ebay. A coin that sat on ebay $1,250 buy it now for months sold for $1,270 + buyers fee. They have great exposure and I think particularly in that price range you can get some nice sales compared to ebay. I sent 3 more coins to them yesterday that have sat on ebay with no luck as well. Also it's not just my crappy ebay store, I've actually been selling coins FAST lately in general.
Just remember their fee is only higher using CC/paypal. They basically stopped eating transactions fees for everyone. This was pointed out on other forums, not sure if I saw it mentioned here.
GC's shipping fee is also lower then HA's. One coin at GC - $4.50 (+50¢ each add'l) One coin at HA (based on value) - starts at $6.40 + $1.57 That's not bank-breaking, but it's still money, and it can add up.
