Heritage Buyer's Fees?

I roamed around their site and I cannot find their buyer's fee structure.
Would someone please tell me what they are.

 

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I cut and pasted this from their Terms & Conditions:

Buyer’s Premium: 2. All bids are subject to a Buyer’s Premium which is in addition to the placed successful bid: • Fifteen percent (15%) on Domain Names & Intellectual Property Auction lots; • Seventeen and one-half percent (17.5%) on Currency, US Coin, and World & Ancient Coin Auction lots (the Buyer’s Premium is 19.5% for auctions in Hong Kong), and except for Gallery Auction lots as noted below; • Nineteen and one-half percent (19.5%) on Comic, Movie Poster, and Gallery Auction (sealed bid auctions of mostly bulk numismatic material) lots; • Twenty percent (20%) on Sports Collectibles lots; • Twenty-two percent (22%) on Wine Auction lots; • For lots in all other categories not listed above, the Buyer’s Premium per lot is twenty-five percent (25%) on the first $250,000, plus twenty percent (20%) of any amount between $250,000 and $2,500,000, plus twelve percent (12%) of any amount over $2,500,000. • Minimum Buyer’s Premium per lot is $19, except for Sports Collectibles lots wherein the Buyer’s Premium is $14 per lot

 

That is quite a bit, I can't imagine spending, say $10k on a coin and then having to shell out another $1,750 in fees

 

Lehigh, thanks for the info.
That's what I thought but I wanted to be sure before I jumped in.

Then you better not deal with auction houses such as Stack's.
I believe that they charge 20% (or is it 22½%).

Great Collections is a nice easy 10%.

And they all charge a Seller's Fee too!!!

 

Thanks to all for the info. Just visited Great Collections, and seen that the buy it now, and 24 hour deals offerings have no buyers fees. And the auctions are a straight 10% buyers fee, for each. Am I correct about this ? Thanks again.

 

Auction housing sounds like a great business. Sell someone else's things and make 20%!!

 

That's just the buyer's fee. The seller also pays a commission. It's brilliant.

 

Ok once I graduate I'm going to found an auction house and never have to work again...

 

More than that for the big boys. It really is a brilliant business.

That sounds right. Plus the shipping fee

 

17.5% buyer's fee is pretty much standard for live auctions where there is also a paper catalog. The costs of renting a room, paying auctioneers and support people, printing and distributing a catalog, advertising, etc. add up and have to paid somehow. Even with the buyer's fee, auctions are often a cheaper way to acquire high-end coins than buying from a dealer. In fact dealers, often buy at an auction, mark-up the coin, and try to sell it to collectors.

Want an example? Link below is to a Judd-1557 goloid pattern dollar, NGC PR66CA, sold at auction by Heritage in Jan 2017. Total cost was $8,812.50 (7500 hammer + 1312.50 premium).

https://coins.ha.com/itm/patterns/1...c/a/1251-6509.s?ic4=ListView-Thumbnail-071515

Now for sale by Aspen Park Coin for only $16,500 (see link below). It is in a PCGS holder at the same grade now. Presumably Aspen Park bought it at the Heritage auction and had it crossed at PCGS. Possible there was or still is another party involved though.

http://www.aprci.com/index.cfm/ID/7/IID/353465/CoinInventoryDetails

It's not that hard to find other examples.

Some auction houses, like Legend, now charge the 17.5% premium for coins sold in live auctions, but 10% for coins sold only via internet auctions.

I predict that more high-end coins will be sold via internet-only auctions and at lower buyer's fees than live auctions. Better imaging, including videos with variable lighting and angles, will help bring it about as will increasing comfort with the internet by older collectors, who are the main buyers of high-end coins. Bottom line of getting a coin for less will be the main driver though.

Cal

 

Even with the 17.5% I've grabbed a few of my best value pickups from heritage. Big fan of heritage.

I'm always baffled when I see ASEs or AGEs on there which can sell absolutely anywhere at anytime and people opt for the place with high fees and normally get below melt especially for ASEs cause of the minimum buyer fee.

 

Yes you are!
For buyers:
Buy-it-now = no fee
Auction = 10%

 

In January I won a Heritage auction for $150.

-- Buyer's Premium (17.5%): $26.25
-- Fees, shipping & handling: $10.50

Subtotal: $186.75

-- California sales tax (7.75%): $14.47

-- Discount for e-check (1%): - $2.01

Grand Total: $199.21

 

WOW. Sounds like you need to cherrypick, just to get a fair price after all the fees. Much better in person I guess. Unless you can only find the one you want at auction.

 

Buyers consider the total price when purchasing coins. So bids in auctions by most buyers are done with the total cost in mind, and they decide their maximum bid on their perception of current market price, whether from dealers or total price (regardless of buyer's premium) of recent auctions. For auction houses that charge higher premiums, it's the sellers who are getting less rather than the buyers paying more. As internet auctioning becomes more common and if it is managed correctly, more folks with high-end coins will consign to internet auctions because they believe they will get a bigger settlement check. Whether this will bring down costs of coins to buyers is hard to predict because there are so many variables that affect market pricing of coins.

Cal

 

Some sellers don't pay any fees to the auction services and get part of what the buyer pays in fees. They actually receive more than the hammer price.

The sellers that can do this, consign a really large amount of high end coins. It's all about the dollar volume the seller hands to the service to auction.

 

I do the reverse math.
I decide what I want to pay then subtract the 17.5% (or whatever the fee is) and also subtract the S&H.
Then I bid that amount.
I've found that I don't win many of my bids but am often outbid by only one increment so I'm close.
But what I do win is at the price I want to pay.

 

Good practice. I've done much the same.

 

This is how I bid as well. That's how I end up with really odd bids like $1062.50.

 

Actually, it's a division process. Let's ignore S&H and taxes for now. Say the most you want to spend on a coin is $1000. If you subtract 17.5% (= $175), you get $825 bid. However, 825 plus 17.5% of 825 (= 144) is $969. You could have bid more and not spent to the limit of $1000. Correct way is to divide your max total by 1.175, so you could bid 1000/1.1.75 = 851. 851 + 17.5% of 851 (= 149) is 1000.

Shipping, handling, and taxes (if you know them) would be subtracted from the max total before dividing by 1.175. Taxes can be tricky. Some states charge them, some don't. In some, they apply to the invoice bottom line; in some, only to the merchandise (hammer plus premium), but not to S&H. And, some states exempt the whole works if the bottom line (possibly minus S&H) is more than a certain amount. For example, in Calif., $1500 or more for the entire invoice exempts it from sales tax.

Say, S&H is $16, and tax will be 8.5% and applies to the whole invoice. Again, it's a division process. So, 1000/1.085 = 922; 922 + 8.5% of 922 (=78) is 1000. Now subtract the 16 S&H from 922, leaving 906 for hammer plus premium. Divide 906 by 1.175 to get max bid of 771 and premium of 135. So if you got it for your max bid, then it would be hammer of 771, premium of 135, S&H of 16, and tax of 78. There goes your grand.

Cal