Listing records with auction houses

chas_kit

G45 Legend
Joined
Apr 25, 2011
Location
Hudson Valley, NY
What are people's opinions or thoughts about listing records with reputable auction houses? It hasn't been done much yet to my knowledge, except for dumb iconic stuff like Beatles & Elvis. Would people be willing to put their 45s up for auction though a Sotheby's like organization? What if the commission was equivalent to ebay/PayPal fees? Would you look and buy records from those auctions if you knew about them?
 
The main issue is getting the word out to a large potential audience. You could turn that around and say that if I were to auction the Just Too Much 45 I could send an email to 10 people and that would give me all the customers I needed.

Also depends on the genre of music. If its a rare Northern Soul 45, John Manship takes consignments at a reasonable percent. No auction house could compete with his 30+ years of name recognition. He does not do as well selling funk. John Tefteller takes consignments but I don't know the details.

For various reasons the auction house model has not worked well for records (Good Rockin' Tonight fiasco). I don't expect that to change, especially since the younger collectors would probably not want to be involved with some large monolith.
 
I don't recall how the financial backing came together but GRT was trying to be the focal point for selling all types of pre 1970s rare records, although for reasons I've mentioned they were not strong in soul. They used a universal grading system of 1-10. Eventually shill bidding and over leveraging did them in. I don't know all the details (and really don't care that much) but they really left a bad stench to many people.
I did get some good records from them, though. Best being from their dispersment auction where I got an original Black Monk Time for around $100 - 150.
 
Good Rockin tonight was started by the guy who developed the huge coin auction house, Gordon Wruebel.
No connection to Heritage Auctions based in Dallas.

GRT was based in the beach area of southern Los Angeles. They lasted about 4 years, eventually warehousing unsold inventory.
GRT employed traveling buyers to obtain inventory for their tri-monthly record auctions. Most of the GRT buyers hit the big conventions like Austin, Allentown, etc. The guy they hired for the garage / psych / obscure rock area was hardly knoweledgeable, and his purchases were usually misguided. I saw him in action at the Austin record convention - he overpaid for off condition lps, 45s... Whereas the GRT soul buyer and the rockabilly / group buyers knew what they were doing.
Problem was the shill bidding, denided by the company at first, then exposed after the Elvis 45 on Sun, shill bid up to 18 grand. another problem was the huge buyer fees that were added to the winning bidder's final total. Many collectors refused to bid, learning that you were charged a buyer's premium. 15% on top of what you had to pay. You also had to pay for express shipping on all items, $500 or $5.
Auction houses are a waste ofd time for selling collectible records unless you happen to have the over-exposed group/performer rarities. The high buyer premium fees would keep most collectors away. The consignment fees would eat up your profits. And their grading is very suspect, as I have learned.
 
A local dealer used Heritage to auction off a set of Elvis Sun 45s he put together. He was convinced he was going to clean up. In the end the listing was poorly done and he did not get what he could have gotten on his own, via eBay.
 
The upside being, that I scored The Rogues on Peyton for well under a hundred bucks and Baltimore Teen Beat lp stone mint for $100 even!! The rule of thumb with GRT seemed to be that acknowledged big buck items would be overhyped and shilled while the lesser know stuff (especially garage) was bargain basement!
 
These days assembling a collection of Elvis Sun 45s would take about a week, considering there seems to be a never ending supply on eBay.

The GRT buyers premiums didn't bother me. I look at those as part of my bid. I know that concept is not widely accepted, but it works for me. I do remember that their grading was not really quite up to standard. a 7 was probably a VG+ but more like a weak VG.

I still have a lot of the GRT catalogs filed with the winning bid amount sheets. The catalogs made for good lunch break reading.