HipStamp With Auctions Having Buyer Premium?

Couldn't these nickel-and-dime sales just constitute market research? Trying out a new channel to see how it performs compared to SAN. Or seeing if APS is onto something by moving StampStore sales to Hip.

Good thought Chris. The Kelleher & Roger's weekly sales have comparable material and maybe the juice is not worth the squeeze on SAN.

"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."

I refuse to believe that Kelleher is selling $12 items on ebay that it does not own.

"For the current price shown in the screen grab, the $12 hammer yields an additional $2.40 at 20%."

They are getting $2.40, but they still have to pay ebay about 9% plus all or a portion of 30c depending on whether the buyer buys just one item or not.

Kelleher, in the interest of transparency and customer service, should just add the 20% to their asking price. Otherwise, as bad as the airlines.

There is zero chance that the items listed by Kelleher right now are under a consignment agreement. They had to have come out of a large lot that someone consigned at some point and was sold because Kelleher does not sit on material. They turn and burn. It is ludicrous to think that Kelleher, with their overhead, is going to sell a $20 or whatever value item on Hip Stamp and send the owner a check for $16 and do this a thousand times. The entire thing is strange given that they have their weekly auctions, collections auctions, flagship auctions and so on and are now peddling these stamps on Hip.

I believe that Chris hit the nail on the head in his post above. They are testing the waters and are not going to put a nice $500 item up for auction on Hip Stamp. SAN is not cheap. But still, why is this stuff not sold in their collection's sale?

At scale, this could be a disaster at least for the first few rounds with bidders not noticing there's going to be a 20% BP. While it's clearly posted on the hipstamp auction page, it would probably help to have a warning before a bidder submits a bid that there will be a BP added to the final sale price.

Now forgive me for thinking about this, but that's their normal buyer premium, but isn't Kelleher not incurring any of the expenses they would with a regular auction by using Hipstamp? I mean, they don't have to print and ship out catalogs, they don't have to have any auction staff, they don't have to pay for a venue...

I get that they need to make money, but when their expenses go down, shouldn't their fees go down too?

Or am I just thinking and need to stop?

My understanding is stamp auction firms have bottom limits for any consign lot ,some have a limit of $250.00 per item and also a limit of $1,000 from any one consignor . It is the accounting and paper work to carry a consignor .

Eyeonwall, the discussion is Kelleher on HIP, not eBay.

Their consignor material hits auctions, seels by phone when unsold in auction and gets listed in the weekly auctions (with permission) as well. When even that does not work the consignor gets the material returned.

Listing a buyer's premium is transparency as well as the norm in the industry. Auction firms are not airline companies and need not operate the same.

oops
Well Hip still must have a fee, so they would still be getting less than $2.40.

ParcelPost - because a practice is current or standard makes it neither right nor best. It makes searching more work than it need be -- just like with the air lines.

A buyer's premium is "the norm" for a physical auction in a saleroom. It isn't for an online-only sale of a stamp via a platform such as Hipstamp.

Could it be that these auctions by Kelleher on HIP are really a lost-leader ,which means they are looking for new clients for their auction firm.

It seems people who go on SAN start looking at all those smaller firms that have entered the business . So Kelleher is trying to generate new customers/ buyers for their platform which leads to new auction buyers . I can't believe this action is a revenue source for them .

floor could be right

Or maybe trying to get the higher premiums not unusual for sites like hipstamps.