I often read posts from collectors berating people who "pay too much" for
items in my auctions, and others from some people saying they don't want to
buy in my auctions because they don't want to pay the "Bruce premium".
Never mind that this is only focusing on that percentage of items I sell
which sell for more than most sellers sell them for. There are also a fair
number of items that sell for LESS than most sellers sell them for (and
often those are purchased by dealers who add them to their websites and
often promptly sell them for a profit).
But if there really IS a "Bruce premium" on some items, here are some
reasons why (for speculation's sake, let's take one that could be found for
$20, but which I am currently auctioning at a start of 99 cents, with no
reserve):
1) I give them the very real hope they will get it from me for less than
$20, for the item really will sell for the highest bid, even if it is just
99 cents (and there is no monkey business with the bidding, and I can
promise you that almost all auction houses have LOTS of monkey business
going on)
2) This way, there is a fun element. What fun is there in clicking the "Buy
It Now" tab on the fixed price $20 item? None. But if they get involved in
watching the item (and likely lots of items each week) they end up getting a
hour or two of fun watching those items end each week in my auctions.
3) If they win it from me, they will 100% surely get the exact item they
thought they were getting, in the exact condition I described it in, and
they also saw a great "super-sized" image that showed the actual flaws in
the item. If they get it from that other guy for $20 fixed price, they may
get told after a week or two, "sorry, but we can't find it", or worse yet,
it may arrive and be in substantially lesser condition than they were led to
think it was, and often they are made to feel like a "bad guy" if they want
to return it, and often they are then made to eat shipping both ways, plus
sometimes a "restocking" fee!
4) The shipping is a big deal, two ways. First, if I sell it, they know 100%
for sure that it will be packed incredibly well, and they have little
guarantee of that from anyone else (some of the biggest auction houses are
the world's worst packers). And I basically charge the actual cost of
shipping and packing (less on expensive orders), while some large auction
houses make HUGE amounts on shipping.
Second, I almost always charge a flat shipping no matter how many items
you get in a single week (since most weeks I sell all same sized items, ones
that can be easily combined). And I include full insurance in my flat
charge, so there are no "hidden fees". If you get 10 posters from me where
the shipping is $10 for the first poster, your shipping for all ten is $10
total.
So, say you bid $25 each on ten posters with me, where you COULD HAVE
found them all for $20 each from ten different sellers. If you had done
that, you would have paid those ten sellers $30 each ($20 plus $10 shipping)
for a total of $300. If you get them all from me, you are likely to get some
for $5 or $10, some for $15 or $20, some for $25, and some you will get
outbid on, so you will pay WAY less.
But say you somehow ended up paying $25 each with me (your maximum bid
on each, which is of could virtually impossible, unless someone knew what
you were bidding, and of course, yet another great point of this is that I
personally have no clue what the bidders are bidding, whereas in almost
every other auction they know EXACTLY what you are bidding, so the cheating
potential is many times greater).
If that WERE to happen, then you would still only pay $25 for ten
posters, $250 in all, plus $10 flat rate shipping, so that you would pay
$260, whereas when you buy them from ten different sellers you pay $300,
thus saving you $40 (or a lot more).
5) What is people's time and their sense of security worth to people? How
many people want to take hours searching all over the Internet for vintage
posters, trying to find the absolute best price? Even if they DO find the
items for less than mine end up going for, there is little sense of security
until the item arrives, safely packed and exactly as described, and every
collectibles buyer can assure you that this does not happen all that often.
Whereas they have a complete sense of security with me.
Do I never make a mistake? Of course not. We make an average of one
mistake every few hundred orders (it is so low because of the system we have
built up over 19 years), but when we DO make a mistake we do everything
within reason to make the customer happy, even to the point of making no
profit, or even taking a decent loss.
6) When I list 1,000 like items at a time, collectors have more reason to
look at the items (because it is a HUGE selection, like shopping in a
supermarket or a Wal-Mart, rather than taking the time to make a trip to a
mom-and-pop store, that MIGHT have one or two items to interest you), and
the large number of items make it more likely that there will be deals on
some to many, and the chances of any bidder surely finding at least one item
to bid on and successfully buy is greatly increased.
7) The free books I give away may well influence the prices. Sure, most
old-time collectors have some or all of the books (I HAVE sold over 300,000
of them) but there are many new collectors who don't have them, and maybe
winning them as a bonus causes them to bid a few dollars higher on an item.
Bruce
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