I am wondering why Amoskeag is so stingy with photos and descriptions.
They charge about the same BP as other auctions.
Do they charge sellers less than others?

RIA is as stingy with pictures too. They are making 25% I (sometimes less, depending) on seller, 17.5 on buyer- plus tax, plus shipping/ins- I feel like they could not care less how they present your gun. ALL sellers seem to look at their bottom line over a period of say a year...so just figure what their percentage of however much they do comes to, and if the buyer takes less... oh well- no skin off their A...

Amoskeag doesn't get the amount of action as RIA, but NO sales Tax...so bidders can figure that into how far they can go with their bids.

I've spoken to some, to try and decide how best to move my own.
Have spoken with Amoskeag, but one the things I told both was the amount of pictures that *I* want. ( rare stuff and two or four pictures is not going to cut it)

They are less than RIA and you can dicker more depending on what you are selling.

When they saw what I had, they made me offers on lower PC on my end, but in the end- it just does not seem worth it.

Post your stuff in the classifieds section of this forum and post as many photographs as you want and incur a ZERO seller’s premium.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That seems the way to go these days, Or just using GB on your own.

You can do better here. Seller has to be willing to bid such that sales tax makes it worthwhile. Here, no sales tax. And, no commission.

If you have something to sell with lots of buyer appeal, you are best offering it at auction, whether GB or auction company. Bidders seem to generally exceed expectations if the item is properly valued. On the Forum, you have to set the price and who knows what is the right number. Ask too much, it will set forever, ask too little it will be gone immediately, meaning you probably lost money that an auction would have attracted.

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Gary
SWCA 2515

But you made a forum member/friend very happy. Surely, that’s priceless!😀

Auction companies make profit on both sides and most likely more than the seller comes close to making. Estate guns make sense because the seller has no connection to them and is only looking to make $ and settle and estate.

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S&W factory revolver armorer

It seems to make sense to add photo’s so collectors can see more of any given item. “But” it’s all about the money. If it’s not worth their time then they won’t do it.
They monitor how many people hit/watch any given item and measure collector interest. If there is high interest they stand to make more money applying a better presentation. It there is low interest then it’s just not worth their time. At least that is how it plays out.

They are most definitely guessing just like everyone else. That’s obvious when you look at the estimated selling price and the final price realized. Which often times are miles apart!

Murph

Request additional pictures if you want them. They will send them to you and maybe they will realize one picture is not adequate if enough people request pictures.

There is no doubt that the bid/ask spread in our market for collectible firearms is very high. However, I don’t think that the fee paid by the seller gets up to 20% unless you have one, very low value item. That fee drops down to 10% eventually ($5,000+ ?). The fee the buyer pays is 20%, but you can reduce it to 17.5% by not using a credit card. Even so a 27-1/2% bid/ask spread is huge.

I don’t know how well Amoskeag handles requests for extra photos because I typically go to their preview. There is no substitute for physically inspecting a firearm - I don’t care how knowledgeable and honest the description writer is (and not all description writers meet either criteria). Rock Island has been great in providing me with additional info/pics recently. Poulin not so much. I do think that it is a disservice to the seller not to include a photo of a box or factory letter if one is available. Certainly both sides of a firearm need to be photographed (assuming a sale price of $1,000 or more).

I’ve only purchased from one SWCA member but I feel that all three sales were “win/win” scenarios. IOW we both benefitted by cutting out the middle man.

It drives me nuts when a seller does not put a picture of the box label or other markings. RIA is notorious for this.

They do almost everything asked of them. Mike Priwer discussed a gun he was interested in on their last auction and they took several pictures and sent them to Mike. They even removed the rear sight leaf from a K frame to photograph the serial number on the bottom of the sight. I have also contacted them in the past with questions, and always received the information that I requested.

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Gary
SWCA 2515

Those low "estimated selling prices" are nothing more than to cover their proverbial A..
Their contracts are very open ended and of course also written to cover THEIR A's, not yours.

I stopped complaining about auction house premiums when I started to understand just how costly it is to run an auction. Companies like RIA have far more overhead than the local auctioneer that goes from farm to farm doing estate sales. That's not a slight against auctioneers and their work; it's just a reflection of time and and effort that goes into creating gun listings, photographing the guns (which is never an easy task), advertising, etc.

With every single auction I watch, I keep a little spreadsheet open on my laptop that lets me quickly calculate the "out the door" cost of the gun I'm bidding on. In fact, I can go in both directions with it ... I can figure out what the cost of the gun would be based on the current bid, and I can figure out what my maximum bid would be given a certain out-the-door price that I'd like to pay. I've done this enough that I can usually estimate shipping to within a few dollars (if the rates aren't already posted), and that prevents any unpleasant surprises.

I've really only had one auction problem with Amoskeag, which I'll not get into details about here. I'd bid on one of their auctions again, but I don't love the way they advertise and market their auctions and would choose a different company to handle something that I wished to sell at auction.

Mike

Like a wise old lady once said, "YOU'D COMPLAIN IF THEY HUNG YOU WITH A NEW ROPE". RIA does a great job helping folks both buy and sell a firearm.

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Don Mundell

IMO RIA is the clear winner for customer service in regards to requests for additional info/pics.
They also tend to have the best guns.

RIA has been very responsive to requests from me.

RIA also gets top dollar from buyers.

The problem with RIA is it’s full retail—and then some!

Full retail?
I don't think there is a price list for a lot of the guns they sell @ their Premier Auctions
At least the ones I admire

The only auction house in our area wants 45% to sell furniture, and they are family heirlooms.

I don't totally agree. You can always start a little high and/or add OBRO after the price. If your ad does not get any response then you can always lower the price. This forum has always been helpful to folks looking for price estimates. So ask first. Not paying a 25% premium and perhaps 6-7% in sales tax leaves quite a bit of wiggle room. On a $5,000 gun that's close to $1,500 so almost a third.

Worst case scenario is you take it off here and go to your favorite auction house. Certainly worth a try for $1,500..........

The other option would be to ask the Big Gorilla to sell it for you. Don't know what he asks but I would rather support Lee than RIA or Amoskeag.

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James Redfield
LM #497

That's true.

I see RIA the way I see my local gun store. If I absolutely must have something today, then it's going to be easiest to pop over to my local gun shop (preferably a mom-and-pop shop; I try to avoid big box stores) and pay full retail.

If I'm willing to invest some time and effort, then I can almost certainly find it cheaper elsewhere. That's true for new guns, and it's equally true for rare and valuable historic arms.

I've found a lot of great deals on historic guns by just keeping my ear to the ground and jumping on good opportunities. But I can never predict what those deals will be and when they'll arrive. Ergo: if I wake up this morning and decide that I absolutely must have a Registered Magnum, then there's a near certainty that I'm going to pay full retail for it.

That's the price we pay for being impatient. And that's absolutely fine ... I've paid MSRP (and even a bit more) for something I absolutely had to have. I don't begrudge anyone for that.

Mike

I agree with Mike. At the last Amoskeag auction I got this. Did I overpay? You betcha! I figure when the next one comes along, I'll underpay. That will balance the two out.

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Don Mundell

Don, "overpay" is all relative. If the enjoyment you get from owning this beautiful revolver exceeds the monetary cost of the revolver, then you did just fine. And even if you overpaid from a resale perspective, it's almost certainly going to appreciate in value ... so you'll eventually be on the right side of the resale economics.

Mike

There is another auction house specializing in firearms only. Will Sullivan auction has now over 10,000 constant followers for his auctions. He does about 20+ photo's of each gun and never lists multiple guns as one bid item. Look them up sometime.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244