Any Experience With Oakwood Auctions (Toronto) Shipping?

I am interested in a couple of lots at this weekend's Oakwood Auctions sale. Has anyone used them, and what is your experience with shipping charges? I'm not worried about the tariffs situation, simply the packaging costs from Canada to USA.

From their Terms & Conditions, they say "Shipping and insurance can be arranged through our preferred courier, PakShip … All shipping and handling charges will be billed through the courier … If your item has not been shipped or picked up within 5 business days of the auction conclusion, a storage fee will be charged per item at a rate of $15.00 USD per diem."

I understand that Oakwood is more of an Art dealer than a Stamp dealer, so should I expect a high priced invoice for white glove treatment International shipping from this arts & antiquities courier? Or for ordinary stamp and small collections do they use in-house shipping and handling at more reasonable rates?

I am also concerned about their payment terms — "Winning bidders must make payment within 48 hours from the date of receiving the invoice. If this condition is not met, a charge of $15.00 USD per diem will be incurred by the winning bidder."

It can take a week or more for mail to get from here to Canada, if I mail a check that could cost me an extra $75 in late fees.

What is your experience with Oakwood? Am I being overly concerned? I did click the box "I agree with the terms & conditions."

Its been a little while, but I've bought from Oakwood twice, each time winning a large lot of mnh worldwide stamps.
As far as I can recall, the experiences were pleasant enough. I received my invoices electronically and simply called them with my debit card information. S&H fees weren't exorbitant at the time.
Also, being in the U.S., given the relative American dollar's strength (vs the Canadian dollar), there are some savings / bargains to be had.

Zebraman, docgfd is correct in his stating that shipping and handling charges are not exorbitant. The bids are in US dollar amounts, not Canadian.
I am in Canada and had the same concerns so I called them. I just informed them that I wanted it by standard, mail and the cost was definetly ok. Talk to them about the payment, cred. Card, cheque or etransfer. They will work with you. And since you are US based there are no taxes except the 5% hst on small handling fee.
As for Customs fees that is a whole different thing. If I sent you goods , apparently the customs charges must be paid to your customs before the package can be sent to the US.

Others I know say their shipping is reasonable both in cost and speed. That being said, I've bid a few times but never with success. They have only held philatelic auctions for a few years.

As a Canadian buyer two things give me pause from bidding with more enthusiasm. The first is their holding an auction in US dollars. It may be necessary for their business model but it is a turn-off for me and many of my collector friends. My second pet peeve is that their auctions are excruciatingly slow. As I type, their second session is ongoing and they have cleared 310 lots in 6 1/2 hours! And, are only 40% done.

Thanks all. I decided to try them out and won a few lots. Nothing extraordinary, just some winter fun. The starting bids were low, frequently 5% of CV, some things sold well, and maybe about a third passed.

You are right, extremely slow to watch the auction live. About 40 lots per hour versus the 60-100 that the bigger auction houses can speed through. I counted 40 seconds from fair-warning last-call to the hammer down. Very often another bid comes in at the 30-second mark. It is not necessarily the auction house's fault if their bidders are that slow, although it is then another 20 second pause waiting for the next lot to open.

Before one 10-minute break they did say "Please take this time to review the upcoming lots" as if their customers don't do their research in advance and need more time to look at the photos once each lot opens. They would be better served by enforcing a 15-20 second timer like other auctions do. That way more people might stay and watch the auction live rather than sitting it out or just submitting unattended bids. And the slow bidders would be forced to read the auction catalog on their own time rather than making the rest of us wait.

The auction ran from 11 AM EST Saturday until past midnight, and of course the US lots that I was waiting for were at the very end of the session.

Hope the shipping is affordable and not as slow as the auction.

Archerg is on spot. Unusually slow looking for that next higher bid. The us dollar amount is an irritant, but just add 35% to the price to make it cdn.
And there is one lot that stood out today, only for the fact of what was bid. Lot 1095 with a us face of $645 or $921cdn sold for an outstanding price of $1800 US.
Woowwee! The seller must be ecstatic with that number, for what was, or should I say not in it. And the auction is still going on.

I bought a couple of lots from their last auction, and there was not an import tax added. However; I did receive a bill in the mail after receiving the stamps from FedEx for a small amount (IIRC, about 15 dollars), which was to cover the HST tax, I believe.

Hopefully they'll get this figured out at Oakwood, because I was a winner again yesterday of several lots.

Hope this helps, Ray

Another point on Oakwood--

On the US lots, there were some mis-ID'd stamps:

• On the lot that showed a 62B, it was not a 62B, very plainly had a borderline under the stars.


• On the lot that showed a 85B, the grill was much too thin to be a Z grill. It was a #93, and I emailed them and told them that but the lot still sold


• Several 10's and 10A's weren't even close to being orange browns


• I had real doubts about any of the 64's/64b's

So, on US classic material, perhaps the buyer should beware.
Ray

Now that you mention it, yes I did see a lot of misidentified items.

The buyer needs to use their own judgement to believe the identification and published catalog value. Lot 572 was a partial set of 1869s with two 15-centers marked as #118 $900, but both look like #119 cv $200.


lot 606 looks like an ordinary #76 brown not a #67b "brown yellow" [which is actually 67a; 67b is "olive yellow"]
lot 610 doesn't look like a #79 all-over grill.
lot 611 #84 D grill looks more like a #93 F grill.
lot 618 two #123s with gigantic hinges possibly covering thins and probably covering a grill
lot 622, I wouldn't touch the 261A unwatermarked cv $800 because it too has heavy hinges and paper adhesion. How can they possibly tell it is not a 276A watermarked cv $200.
lot 644 I'm skeptical that that's a 63b dark blue.

Some of the collections were listed with a higher CV than I would have estimated. I wonder how many misidentified thousand dollar stamps were included in the CV of those collections.

I'm not discouraging anyone from participating, just buyer beware.

Update: I received the lots that I won and the shipping charge was reasonable for the size of the collection(s). But I still had to pay a $24 fee to UPS for Customs Clearance for Import Shipments. I would have had to pay an additional $12 COD fee if I didn't pay the $24 online in advance of the shipment.

UPS says "The charge is not a duty or tariff, but a brokerage fee for customs clearance. Even though your goods are CUSMA-compliant and fall under HTSUS 4907 and 9704 (0% duty), UPS Standard shipments always incur brokerage charges because UPS handles the customs paperwork and submission on your behalf. These fees are separate from duties or taxes and apply regardless of the tariff rate.

These fees enable UPS to complete the necessary work to ensure your package gets through customs smoothly. A licensed customs broker is required to facilitate the import and export of goods, which includes preparing and submitting documentation, calculating and paying duties and taxes, and ensuring compliance with regulations to hasten the release of a package through customs.

https://www.ups.com/us/en/shipping/.../import-fees
https://www.ups.com/media/us/curren...f/imaddl.pdf