Heritage Buyers Premium 0

[ExNihilo]

On 11/2/2021 at 2:50 PM, OuterBanks said:

15-25% buyer’s premium seems to be common among auction houses outside of comics though.   

Why does this bother people so much?  This is a high end auction house with massive costs associated with it - big staff, offices all over the globe, slick marketing budget etc.  That’s not gonna happen for free.  You want 10% and fewer bells and whistles then there are plenty of other options.

Heritage routinely sets records on books and as a collector that helps me with valuation.  They can have a 40% buyer’s premium - if some rich oil tycoons in Texas want to show up at their office and spend $4M on a high grade AF15 that’s great news for me and my crappy 2.5 AF15.

 

Like I mentioned in a follow up comment, I've never looked at Heritage until a week ago so this is all new to me.  I get that most buyers simply factor it into their bid price, but it's jarring as a 1st time user to see a current auction price of $10k and then to see the actual price is currently $12,500 $12,000.  It's really just a matter of recalibrating my brain to how something works.

EDIT: 20% of $10k is $2k, not $2500.  Brain fart.  Is it scary that I work in finance and made a simple goof like that?  

Edited November 3, 2021 by ExNihilo

[valiantman]

On 11/2/2021 at 4:12 PM, William-James88 said:

They already had a $5000 minimum entry value (total) for sellers. So I'm guessing people were not sending them Solar Man of the Atom 10 9.6s before (meant to tell you, I took your advice and started getting some. Sadly my first 9.6 I got back is indeed a full on 9.6 and I would be shocked if it came back higher. But that's just the first one).

Someone has been sending individual items that are under $95 (and now under $145), otherwise this is a non-issue.  If every item in the auctions is over $145, then no one will ever pay the $29 minimum.  They'll pay 20%.

Solar #10 will always be a great book in the Valiant world.  The question is how many Valiant fans are out there.  But that is true of every fandom. 

Edited November 3, 2021 by valiantman

[OuterBanks]

On 11/2/2021 at 6:17 PM, ExNihilo said:

Like I mentioned in a follow up comment, I've never looked at Heritage until a week ago so this is all new to me.  I get that most buyers simply factor it into their bid price, but it's jarring as a 1st time user to see a current auction price of $10k and then to see the actual price is currently $12,500.  It's really just a matter of recalibrating my brain to how something works.

 

I get it - I think a lot of people hate on eBay, Heritage & PayPal but I think they’re all positives for the Hobby.  HA is an absolute pleasure to buy from - nothing has ever been damaged and if you setup a tracking list and alerts it’s easy to follow the auction.  HA also has “collectors” - people who do more than just comics that are now interested in comics as part of their collection.

If you want to check out some sites that might have more affordable auctions - ComicLink (one going on right now), ComicConnect, eBay have them.