How much money do you make?

Hi CT’ers,

I’m wondering how much money a seller makes putting their coin in an auction. Does a seller get the price a coin hammers for and then the auction house gets the buyers fee?

 

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It depends on the house. Generally there is a sellers fee and the buyers fee. Some have no sellers fee, some have no sellers fee after a certain price point, and if you have a big enough consignment value wise you can negotiate

 

Most auction houses use to charge 5-10% comm. fees in 1980s/90s

Since that time coin prices have tripled or more/ comm. fees are now average 20%. The Heritage Paramount Sale yesterday Part one saw hammer prices go to the outer limits

 

I believe that on average, a collector should be extremely happy if it's possible to get back what he/she paid even without an inflation adjustment...

You can't really make safe conclusions from the hammer prices you see in auctions because the consignors are quite often not collectors.

 

I've wondered about this question should I ever decide to sell my collection. From what I've heard it's possible to sell an entire collection to an auction house or dealer for cash up front. It's also possible to consign the coins. I am not sure which is the better deal for the seller, but it seems like one would be lucky, selling wholesale, to just get back the amount expended on the coins.

 

I sold off my Canadian/ US obsolete banknote coll. with Heritage. They where great/ in the end I made money on my original investment. I then used that $$$ to secure really nice gold coins, which was a win/ win. With Heritage, sometimes, after winning a particular coin, next day they will send you a notification, that someone wants to offer you 40 % more for it. I always decline/ rather keep my prize. But it shows that the market is HOT/ people are worried about the decline of FIAT currencies.

 

I recently asked Roma their fees ect and I was told 10% + £15 per coin for cataloguing ect so I don't understand why anyone would auction off a cheap coin

 

When I contacted them, they said it was 10% with a minimum of £15, I think

 

Ooh I might have misunderstood then

 

That all depends on where you have the coin auctioned. Each place can charge different fees.

 

CoinTalk contains a lot of posts and threads with information about auction houses and sellers' fees. Here's just one example:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/heritage-buyers-fees.294911/#post-2715855

Although it may take a bit of work, if you use the search function you'll find useful information about this topic.

In a nutshell, sellers fees vary and are negotiable in many cases (especially for rare and high quality coins). For some coins, the auction house may be willing to pay the seller part of the buyer's fee that it collects.

 

Auctioning is the better deal for the seller. Selling it up front means you take pennies on the dollar so the auction house knows they can profit from the sale. They aren't going to buy things for prices they can't make money on

 

Only for monsters like 6 and 7 figure coins. 5 figure ones if you have enough of them. Less than that though and there's basically no chance

 

If you have direct or indirect experience in this area -- examples of coins that were desirable enough to merit payment from the auction house in order to list them in their auction -- it would be very interesting to hear about it!

 

Oh, but for the days of 10%...! Someone said average comm. today was 20%...? Here in rural IN that's a low avg...some as high as 30% comm. not including the various "fees" which have crept in/up, not unlike airline baggage fees that also never were.

 

6 and 7 figure coins. Any 7 figure coin you made a massive mistake if you arent getting some of the buyers fee. Same with 6

Average is a bit misleading as there can be listing fees. Buyers fees range from like 17.5 to 0 with of course the 0 having higher seller fees. Heritage and Stacks you give up a bigger percentage (without the negotiating power) than you would at Legend/GC/David Lawrence. There are reasons to do that but what the right venue is largely depends on what you have and what it's worth. Heritage/Stacks/Legend won't have any interest in a 50 dollar coin as one example

 

Any specific coins of which you're aware? Looking at recent auction hammer prices and speculating about whether that coin's consignor received some of the buyer's fee is different from actually knowing that some coin was worth enough to receive such a fee. It just would be fun to know some specific coins!

 

Not sure how much clearer to make it than what I said above. It's very clear what the 6 and 7 figure coins are

 

Every selling venue has a commission, (ie fee) structure. Average selling commission is usually 20-25% of the hammer price, and the buyer normally has to pay a "buyer's premium" which can range from 10%-25%.

For example if you consign a coin that has a hammer price of $1000 you will normally receive $800; however the buyer will have to pay $1200-$1250 for the coin.

Auction houses commissions vary, but understand they all have to make money. Even selling the coins by listing on ebay has various fees involved. Listing fees, final value fees, etc. Under eBay's managed payment system the fee structure is approx. 12.3% plus some other charges.

The only was a seller receives the net amount directly is when he sells the coin directly to another purchaser.

 

Obviously, as @baseball21 points out, auctioning your collection will almost always result in a better deal for the seller than selling your collection to the dealer. But sometimes, one has little choice. As I've mentioned before, I was in a financial position back in 2015/2016, after a couple of years of unemployment, with my savings almost entirely depleted, where I simply couldn't wait -- possibly as long as six months -- for my collection of British gold coins, silver crowns, and historical medals, amassed over the previous 30 years, to be cataloged, listed, sold at auction, and the proceeds received and conveyed to me minus the seller's commission. I needed the money right away, for things like paying rent! So instead of auctioning the coins, I sold almost the entire collection directly to Stack's Bowers, and received perhaps 35% to at most 40% of the coins' retail value at the time. (The retail value would be a multiple of that amount now, especially the gold coins, but I try not to think about that! As I said, I didn't have a choice.) I never did follow up to see how much my coins eventually sold for at auction -- I couldn't bring myself to look.

So it's not an ideal solution, and I would never have turned to it if I had another option. If I could have waited for the auction proceeds, I might not have sold the coins at all.