Getting tired of auction houses

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by medoraman, Jan 19, 2020.

  1. David@PCC

    David@PCC allcoinage.com

    Ebay makes money from seller commissions, I did not find a rule that you must use them at check out. They split from PayPal 5 years ago.
    There is no sales tax for coins in Colorado, but that does not stop Ebay from collecting. I still think my solution works, if you can find a condition that says I must use them at check out I would like to know about it.
     
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  3. TypeCoin971793

    TypeCoin971793 Just a random guy on the internet

    I’m finding myself bidding in fewer and fewer auctions as I get frustrated not knowing what I will have to pay for a given coin.
     
  4. IdesOfMarch01

    IdesOfMarch01 Well-Known Member

    FYI, the majority of U.S. states exempt ancient coins from sales tax:

    https://www.ha.com/information/state-sales-tax-info.s

    For the approximately 17 states that do collect some amount of sales tax, the tax depends on criteria such as total invoice price (some states exempt purchases over a certain amount, other states exempt purchases under a certain amount), the coin's metal (some states exempt gold and silver), etc., and some states include the buyer's premium in the amount taxed while some don't. Check the link above.

    If you live in a state that exempts ancient coin purchases, you don't have to pay sales tax regardless of the source from which you purchased the coin, as long as it's delivered to your home state.

    As far as I can determine (which isn't very far, admittedly) coins purchased from countries outside the U.S. are not subject to taxes such as VAT unless the country specifically requires this. In some foreign countries, the VAT is collected only on the buyer's premium (since that's the value being added by the auction house) and not the hammer price of the coin. You can usually find this information in the auction house's Terms and Conditions.
     
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  5. Suarez

    Suarez Well-Known Member

    ....and ebay doesn't care. They'll charge you the sales tax anyway unless you live in a state with no sales tax. You could, I guess, try getting that sales tax back from your state but I doubt it'd be worth the hassle for even a small minority of people.

    Rasiel
     
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  6. panzerman

    panzerman Well-Known Member

    That is why I just go to auction houses in US/ Europe/ Japan there are no taxes. But, we still get dinged with horrible 30+% exchange rate, and comm. fees 15-20 %:(:(:(:(:(
    I know when I went to the Ottawa CNA show, most dealers charged no tax if one paid cash:D
     
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  7. Nvb

    Nvb Well-Known Member

    I still ended up paying HST to receive my last win from CNG.. even though they shipped USPS/ Canada post.
    Fees are atrocious but auctions can still be cheaper than dealers... and often are where the best coins are found.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2020
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  8. panzerman

    panzerman Well-Known Member

    I have never been dinged HST yet on US coin shipments:rolleyes:
     
  9. Gavin Richardson

    Gavin Richardson Well-Known Member

    Sorry for the fine print, but I keep a few charts like these to help me gauge my bidding on the few auctions I participate in. They aren’t perfect but close if I keep them updated. I have switched to TransferWise for payment. Have not added taxes. :-(
    D35F323C-51C5-47F0-891A-6B69784F1F39.jpeg
     
  10. AncientJoe

    AncientJoe Well-Known Member

    This is correct, although you may need to fight your state to prove that you don't owe anything: it's one of the reasons I try to always use a dealer. Case in point, I just received a lovely "Notice of Audit Initiation" letter in the mail which turned out to only be them trying to claim tax on coins I imported. FedEx reports the contents of packages and correlates them to the importer, giving the states a mechanism for tracking inbound purchases. It was just a single shipment which they flagged for me but it's still a hassle.
     
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  11. Aleph

    Aleph Well-Known Member

    I have seen several cases of probable abuse of online bids lately. For example, in a Bertolami auction I did an experiment where for a stretch of lots I placed prebids on some and live (online) bids for the others. Every prebid was raised to one step below my max bid. All live bids sold at the actual opening bid. I was the only bidder on this stretch as far as I could tell. Verdict does not look good for bertolami and fairness. Leu sure looked like they we’re screwing me also. I bid strongly on four or so lots in a recent auction. Everyone got bumped up to nearly my max in the last second. Coincidence? Can’t rule that out but it sure looked suspicious. Just to test the observation, on another lot in the leu auction that was comparable, I bid fairly lowish. Same thing happened. It got bumped up to nearly the max bid in the last second. Thing was, my bid was on the low side so I expected to get blown away, but nope my bid just got maxed. Makes me hesitate strongly to bid in their auctions. You put bids in based on the estimate that they won’t all get maxed or raised. If there is actual competition, ok that’s fair but what’s not is to max out every bid without competition. Neither of these cases is proven but at this point, I go with what seems likely. For bertolami, only bid live. For leu, choose your battles very carefully unless you have deep pockets. As a second observation, Biddr based auctions seem to be quite fair/on the level as far as my experience goes.
     
  12. TypeCoin971793

    TypeCoin971793 Just a random guy on the internet

    Wow...
     
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  13. Gavin Richardson

    Gavin Richardson Well-Known Member

    Regarding whether or not to use eBay at check out, I nearly purchased a coin this month from a German eBay site. The seller in his notes to the auction encouraged a person to person PayPal payment. In other words, he suggested not using eBay to check out. I nearly bought the coin because I really wanted it, and it was a good price. But I did not know the seller, and I figured that if I did not go through eBay at checkout, I would not be covered by the eBay buyer protection plan in case anything went wrong with the transaction. I don’t know if my assumption is correct, but that might be one implication of bypassing the eBay checkout procedures. It might void their buyer protections. I passed on the coin.
     
  14. Volodya

    Volodya Junior Member

    I pretty much never place book bids anymore, but certainly I used to. It's hard to document, but imo there's no real doubt that dealers sometimes succumb to the temptation to play the kind of games you describe. If you encounter a situation where there's no practical alternative to bidding through the book, try this tactic: rather than simply entering your maximum bid (disregarding commission for this discussion), enter a lower amount and check the "increase my bid by x%" box. In other words, if your maximum bid is $1000, enter $700, +40% as needed. That gets you to $980; close enough. Obviously you can be even more precise, but dealers won't love you if you ask them to increase your bid by, say, 43%.

    I had pretty reasonable success with this tactic. For reasons both psychological and practical, it's quite a bit harder for an auction house to manipulate a dynamic bid like that, particularly in a live public auction.

    Phil Davis
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2020
  15. RichardT

    RichardT Well-Known Member

    Thanks for this. I suspected that I went through the same thing, so it's good to hear that others have had the same feeling.

    I don't think that all auction houses allow bid protection of that sort, but I'll try it out when I can.
     
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  16. savitale

    savitale Well-Known Member

    I'm not a tax expert and I haven't really been paying attention to this issue. But, if the new tax laws say that sales tax now applies to items bought online, wouldn't that apply equally to items bought in foreign auctions as well?
     
    Paul M. likes this.
  17. Paul M.

    Paul M. Well-Known Member

    Who’s collecting Canadian, Spanish, etc. taxes on online purchases made by Americans?
     
  18. Clavdivs

    Clavdivs Well-Known Member

    @Gavin Richardson has provided excellent pointers on photography and foreign auctions this week alone. Seriously great advice ...Big fan! Thanks so much I really do appreciate it!
     
  19. medoraman

    medoraman Supporter! Supporter

    No one can force a German or UK firm to collect and remit US Sales taxes, but now every state in the US can. That is the difference.

    Btw, this post was not ONLY about the taxes now. Its everything. I just got dinged $25 for shipping me ONE SLAB. It is SLABBED, no extra packaging necessary. Throw it in something and insure if you want. They get to save that Safe-T mailer that evidently costs the auction houses $13 each based on what they charge me for shipping. That, plus buyer fees going to 20% when I never need a catalog, I look and bid online, and now Sales Tax on top and its getting really not worth it.

    Like I said, European houses used to be the high fee option, but not anymore.

    Yes, I am familiar on how Sales/Use Tax works. I used to work in corporate tax for the largest mortgage firm in the US. Technically residents are responsible for paying Use tax when buying from out of state/country. I never worried about it for coins since we are not really "using" them. Most everything else someone buys and it deteriorates over time to nothingness. Coins we careful preserve, so we will not be the last owners. I have also thought of getting a resale license, since technically every coin I buy will be resold at some point, but then I have to file returns, etc.
     
  20. savitale

    savitale Well-Known Member

    Maybe coin shows will see a comeback? With increasing buyer’s fees, shipping costs, sales tax, use tax, VAT, etc., face-to-face cash transactions with a dealer may offer more competitive buy-sell spreads.
     
  21. Valentinian

    Valentinian Well-Known Member

    I agree.

    Every time I win in a European auction I compute the ratio of the dollars I actually pay to the total hammer price and make a note of it in my records. If I don't win much, shipping is a higher fraction of the cost and that can be discouraging.

    Here are some actual ratios. One very small win in November had $ paid = 1.74 times hammer in euros (but I am very happy with what I got). Another win in November, larger but still small, was $ = 1.48 times euros. A recent small win from London had the usual high shipping cost and was $ = 2.01 times pounds. All these conversions suffer from being small wins with substantial shipping costs. A bigger win from Leu was $ = 1.265 times Swiss Francs.

    In each case the total cost to me was fine with me and distinctly less than on fixed-price sites. As Doug noted, "It is what it is." Sometimes I want coins. Usually auctions are the cheapest way to get them. I anticipate the fees and with a little calculation before I bid I am not surprised by what the actual cost will be. It may irritating that "80 euros" really means "$120," but, if you want the coin for $120, bid up to 80 euros and be happy you can do the math.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2020
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