Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums Petroliana News Tacoma Washington Auction June 4 & 5

The auction was reasonable for most items and some down right cheap. It is also a problem with me on the 20% thing with shipping. We bought a pump and then went to pick it up, 15%, five hour round trip and the people were very helpful and right off the freeway.

Wow, I want to see that painted over sign after it's cleaned up and the price those wood propellers went for is soooo cheap.
I should've went! Oh well.

Not sure if the propellers were the correct and original size though.

ya, but even nicely reproduced props go for far more than $50! ,,, and those could be real but I have not done any research on them because I did'nt see them till today.
It looks like it would've been a fun and awesome auction to go to.

yeah, i took part in the online auction... stuff going very reasonable. i think the shipping from WA plus the high 20% premium scared away a lot of people.

i was really hoping to buy ALL of those BP oil bottles, but went too high for me

still got a couple things that I should be able to get great trades for at some meets

Art told me that he was very disappointed in the prices and the auction company left about 50 of his pieces out of the auction and moved someone elses stuff in.

from what I could tell as an online bidder, a lot of the items had serious condition issues... but no idea if those were his or not.

from what i could see, items went up to $100-$200 with ease, but getting items over the $250 mark seemed difficult. I felt like there were a lot of items selling for about 60-70% of actual worth

I was there & there wasn't a good "flow" to the auction. I think the motorcyles kind of hurt the auction. The bidding on the motorcycles drug on for a LONG time (alot of people left the bldg.) As for prices, it's a chance you take with an auction. I've seen Art's collection & this wasn't even the tip of the iceberg.

I was there online and it was a slow moving auction. Online fees discourage me from bidding and make your upper sending limit smaller for sure. However the prices were far saner than the auction in Ontario to which Craig O said he would liked to have his pumps sold at. I understand they were different pumps and different condition but those were significantly higher dollar figures nonetheless.
Fred

a little more added info... just got my charge for shipping, its just as bad as the buyers premium, they charged $48 for a 14lb package to the midwest via UPS ground. Absolutely crazy inflated shipping charges to go with that high premium. Not too happy, wont be participating in another one of their auctions i dont think

Hope that was NEXT Day air !!!!

i wish... no, unfortunately i think it was just a way to charge more to the buyer for the auction house to pocket.

i feel like most of the auction houses are getting this way, its disappointing. The only good experience I ever seem to have is thru Matthews auctions.

here is my full breakdown (makes those good deals not so good):

I spent $440 on items I won + Buyers premium 20% ($88) + inflated shipping charge of $48 (as noted above)

Total spent = $576 (when total goods won was only $440)

With the advent of being able to watch a auction live, on the internet and sometimes on tv, and to be able to bid on the items from your location potentially anywhere across the world, there are going to be a lot of auctioneers that will take advantage of the internet buyer. Combine that and these televised broadcasts of BJ and other auctions that are making a whoopping 40% per item sold, at least, and these other auction houses get even more dollar signs in thier eyes. They make money off the seller and the buyer to sell the items at their auction. Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge a worker their share of a profit but those percentiles are EXTREME!
I try to attend auctions that I know they will only charge a 12% buyers fee at max. Most auctions give deep discounts on their fees when you attend the auction. Example is one place I goto charges ONLY a 10% buyers premium and if you are a internet bidder, you pay a extra 3-5% to the internet "middle man", and then tax but if you attend and pay with cash or personal check they reduce their buyers fee to only 7%!!!
If I am going to bid on a auction online I make sure that the auction house's fees are only up to 12% because there is the internet "middle man's" cut that is usually 3-5%, the tax and shipping can turn into a nightmare as shown above. It comes down to being prepared to figure at least 50% to ad to your high bid if your going to bid online,,,, thats too rich for my blood most of the time.
It is also part of the reasoning why ebay has increased their fees but, as always, only to the seller.
So, Buyer be ware of the item and of who is selling it and ALWAYS read the auction houses terms and conditions before you bid. I noticed, when I've read some of the auction houses terms,that some are charging 20% and then + the internet bid price and tax and shipping. Just insane!!

I'm still waiting for my sign to arrive, two weeks after the auction and I'm on the west coast