Hipstamp With Auctions Having Buyer Premium?

Is this a new thing? 20% buyer premium added to a hipstamp listing?

Notthe first auction house to do so. Some time ago, I came across a French one.

One argument for the buyer's premium is the additional costs that an auction house faces vis-à-vis online sellers and the drawbacks of increasing commissions for sellers in that market. Adding premia to online sales is certainly not appropriate.

20% is Kelleher's usual BP. Looks like they are making sure they get it, regardless of how they're selling.

Kelleher now on Hipstamps interesting . Guess they are going to give up their Sunday night auctions which was a nice place to buy if you didn't mind waiting two days to find out you didn't get the lot, that you were the high bidder just seconds before the auction closed .

Assuming they are consignment items, maybe they have to do the BP for clerical/tax reasons? I'm not sure what the value add is to justify paying the BP when thousands of other items on hipstamp (or eBay) don't require it.

If the idea is to use hipstamp as an alternate to SAN, then I would suggest the items need to be categorized differently and more information to note that the item is part of a real auction house format.

I find Kelleher extracting "nickels and dimes" like this odd. The items listed look like they could have been picked out of their large lots. I have never seen an auction house of their size do such a thing.

Their weekly sales are still on SAN.

Why not just have APS store vet everything and auction them there on HIP, skip they buyer's premium, boost the quality factor, add the ease of use and do away with the middlemen who take 40% from the seller/buyer. More/better pictures on HIP would help. Tick the box to pay for cert before delivery and skip shipping the item back and forth. All put together would make my APS membership actually add value, make selling/buying easier and perhaps increase APS revenue as well.

Agree with Rogdcam ----They are just " nickel and dimes" selling and competing with a large section of their customers / bidders .

JamesG:

The APS store can't even vet the stuff they sell at stamps.org. I've had to return 5 out of 20 stamps in the past 3 years because they were mis-identified or "not as described". That's a 25% failure rate. Fortunately, 3 of the 5 were stamps I had asked APEX to certify after purchase but BEFORE they were shipped to me, so the sellers got charged for the certs and I got my monies back.

When I called the APS stamp store, I was told that APS doesn't vet any of the stamps in the store; they don't have the time or manpower. Caveat emptor rules.

APS has a very informal vetting using the 'ask a question'.

I have used this to alert APS about listings of misidentified items and forgeries.

Turn around was quick and often the philatelist who addressed the issue includes the outcome; for example, the listing was changed, repriced, removed, etc.

I hope this feature will still be available with the move to Hip.

Kelleher, primarily sells the property of others and when doing so makes their "nickles and dimes" for a buyers fee and a fee to the seller. Neither Kelleher not the seller should have to forgo a portion of the price of an item just because it is listed on Hip.

By the way, "nickles and dimes" as you wrote rogdcam and floortrader agreed, seems to contradict my basic math skills. At 20%, it becomes Dollar(s), not "nickels and dimes" when the hammer price top $4.99. For the current price shown in the screen grab, the $12 hammer yields an additional $2.40 at 20%.

Leaving no stone unturned as to finding ways and places to sell a client's material is the mark of good business.

The other auction houses must not be good businesses.

Wait a minute ......"nickels and dimes " is a expression .....for example I would not take out my pickup truck out to a job if it was under $80.00 that would be so people don't nickel and dime me on sealcoat jobs ,but then I would not take my dump truck out with hot asphalt for less than $500.00 again I would not do nickel and dime repair work anything under $500.00 was nickel and dimes to my business .
So for Kelleher Stamp Auctions , to have a philatelic expert pull a stamp from a collection then give it to a clerk to list it and photo it . Then have that same staffer take the stamp a day or a week later to the mail room .Then have a mail clerk package it then ship it all for that $2.40 is running a business to make nickels and dimes . You got three employees involued for what $2.40 !

The $2.40 is ok for me to make in a half-hour while being retired working on stamps because I am sitting in front of a level two quote screen showing the financial markets But not happy to see Kelleher doing it , soon they will be selling country collections for $10.00 or $20.00 on Ebay ,as I said earlier they should leave that to their customers .

Floortrader - Exactly. I come from the construction industry where Change Orders are the norm but when you are working on a project you need to know when to charge and when to just get it done and make it up some other way if possible. In government work the paperwork adds some serious cost and you are always floating money for long periods of time. But, back to Kelleher and stamps, it makes no sense to me what they are doing, and I question WHY they are doing it. And yes, "nickels and dimes" is a phrase to indicate pettiness/smalltime/not worth it.

PS: Nickels and dimes can be thousands of dollars depending upon scale.

Just off the subject -----Did any of you seen how good of a Worldwide Collection Auction that Kelleher had today . Sure the usual good areas when well, but a lot of other material when well also .I would say the firm liked results today .