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Not sure if any of you get sent the auctions through, sometimes there are some interesting items.

http://auctions.holtsauctioneers.com/as ... e_no=&st=X

Auctions are getting to be expensive ...

Take a gun that "sells" £1000

The buyer will pay £1000 plus a buyers premium of 22.5% +VAT so a total of £1270

The auctioneers deduct a sellers commission of say 20% + VAT or £240 and a 1.5% insurance charge Say £20

So, the Vendor receives £740, the auction company receives £530 including £85 VAT.


And if you take their advice and put a suggested reserve on and item, which then fails to sell, the seller will pay 6% of the reserve!


Who gets the best deal?


Can you imagine going to Sainsbury's and getting £100 of shopping and being told - that is £120 please.

I've given up buying from Holts - far too expensive for any mark up and expensive even for retail prices.
That said, they are selling most of what they have so somebody is willing to pay!

Aye its hard to get a bargain from Holts these days with high reserves, going there less and less now and the stuff needs to be carefully checked as to condition.

Just have a look at the unsold lots from the last sealed bid sale, these are getting longer and longer and the out the door prices are very high, especially as you need to travel to the ends of the earth Norfolk or worse still bloody London to see if the kit is of any value.

For example £20 plus fees for an incomplete Lee Loader in 9mm Luger!

Hells teeth I'll sell you a new one complete for less than that.

The issue is also with dealer prices of recent with some bordering on outrageous prices being quoted on websites.

A bog standard average condition P14 for 600 quid anyone?

I've just bought some 50cal Tracer from Holts - got it for pennies and I mean pennies!

Mike

But if they have had to pay Holts £450 out the door for then you can see how prices climb.

Stock has to come from somewhere and auctions used to be the main source for out of production stuff so if that goes up then the retail will also.

Polchraine wrote:Auctions are getting to be expensive ...

Take a gun that "sells" £1000

The buyer will pay £1000 plus a buyers premium of 22.5% +VAT so a total of £1270

The auctioneers deduct a sellers commission of say 20% + VAT or £240 and a 1.5% insurance charge Say £20

So, the Vendor receives £740, the auction company receives £530 including £85 VAT.


And if you take their advice and put a suggested reserve on and item, which then fails to sell, the seller will pay 6% of the reserve!


Who gets the best deal?


Can you imagine going to Sainsbury's and getting £100 of shopping and being told - that is £120 please.

Well said Polchraine.

I would like to buy an antique Fairbairn Sykes commando dagger, but by the time you add on all the commission to the £130 hammer price it doesn't seem like the bargain of the century for a third pattern type.

http://auctions.holtsauctioneers.com/as ... &saletype=

Use my example above. Some guns go for maybe £500, but most are in the thousands, so £1000 could be a reasonably average figure.

An item takes maybe 2minutes to auction ... and there are probably 15 staff there including security. So, that is a total of 30 man minutes for the selling. Taking the set-up/take down costs across all all items there is maybe another 15 man minutes. Creating the catalogue entry and other bits - another 15 man minutes. Seeing the gun and accepting it for auction - maybe 30 minutes of one person - so we are at 90 minutes. Round it up to 2 hours.

2 hours and £450 (ex-VAT)- a nice little earner at £225/man-hour ...

If the average of £1000 is a little low, and I think it might be, then it gets even better for the auctioneer. Think of a gun that sells for £10k, or when one goes at £50k - that would rake in £22,500

Yeah don't even look at sec 7.3 stock as they are asking stupid prices for guns that would have fetched a couple of hundred before the handgun ban, one asking in excess of 2k