Guide to Buying at Live Auctioneers:
The following Guide will help you better navigate and acquire items with more ease and at better prices when you are bidding for items on LiveAuctioneers.com
Buyer's Premium - When making a bid on Live Auctioneers, always account for the "buyer's premium." The buyer's premium is an additional expense and surcharge that is charged to the buyer for each item that they purchase. On the on-line auction description you will see a line that show how much this is. It will typically be between 25-30%. So in example, if your winning bid is $100.00. Your actual price that you will pay the auction house will be $100 + $28 (B.P.) equaling $128.00 total.
Shipping and Handling Charge - Most of the auction houses represented on LiveAuctioneers.com do not have their own in house shipping capability. They will typcially advise the buyer to contact 2-3 local pack and shippers like The UPS Store, Pak-and-Mail or another third party company that is local. It will be incumbent on you as the buyer to first procure one of these shipping companies and then arrange for your item to be picked up. The process can be lengthy and cumbersome. Plus, you are at the mercy of these companies on what they will charge to you. You will and I repeat will be paying a lot more for shipping and handling than you normally would by buying an item on Ebay or Amazon or most other on-line e-commerce companies. The pack and mail company will have to send a driver out to the auction and then pick it up, bring it back to their facility and then pack and ship it. Most of these companies have good relationships with the auction houses and often will pick up large amounts of auction items in one batch which hopefully offsets the charges for your individual purchase a tiny bit. When you are making a bid on an item, you need to account for the shipping and handling charge being at a higher amount than your normal on-line shopping experience, especially if it is a bigger and bulkier item which weighs a lot. So in example, if you buy a $100 item that weighs one pound, you might normally be used to paying the seller $5-$15 for shipping. However, in the scenario of buying an item from an auction house at Live Auctioneers, you might be looking more like $35-$50 or more, plus all the additional time you had to spend with emailing back and forth with these shipping companies. Just keep in mind the much larger shipping fees when making a bid on Live Auctioneers.com.
Buying from an Auctioneer located in a major metropolitan area - If you are bidding in auction in a major metro area, like Manhattan, downtown Chicago or Los Angeles, then please factor the shipping and handling charges to be even high than what we illustraed in our previous section. These areas have ultra high rents and are very expensive for the shippers to operate. In example: We purchased a $100.00 copper and mixed metal silver platter and were elated by the bargain price that we received it at! However, it was from an auction house in Manhattan, New York. The shipping company charged us $187.00 to pack and ship. By the time we added up the base hammer price of $100 + $28 buyers premium and the $187.00 ship cost we were into the piece at $315.00 which was over triple what our bid price was at! Needless to say, we were a little disappointed and made a note to ourselves thereafter to factor in a huge amount more for shipping and handling when buying from auction houses located in downtown areas of major cities.
Buying Furniture or Large Items that require a trucking company - If you are buying furniture or very large and heavy pieces, just make sure to account for an even greater amount of freight. In example, if you buy a $300 table that weighs 60 pounds and measures 3-4' in length, then estimate another $300 easy for you shipping costs. Always be careful when bidding on big items, sometimes they seem like a super cheap price, but then you get clobbered with freight and you often end up having buyer's remorse
Tax Resale Certificate - If your intent is to buy from LiveAuctioneers for resale purposes for your local store or your online Ebay store, then don't be lazy and let sales tax be charged to you. You need to set up your Live Auctioneers Account to be flagged for resale. If you are charged sales tax, then email the auction house to have them remove it before you settle the payment amount.
Conclusion: There truly are some magnificent bargains to be had by buying on LiveAuctioneers.com. These auction house put up some great merchandise and often times items go for well below actual market price. However, to be an astute buyer and not rip yourself off on Live Auctioneers, just be sure to factor in all the additonal costs of the buyers premium, additional shipping and your extra time that you have to spend in getting the items sent to you. Happy Hunting and we hope you enjoyed our article!
Authored by Greg Arbutine on 1-27-25
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