I’m in the process of consigning a good amount of wine and have solicited appraisals from Winebid and Hart Davis Hart. I was interested in this Board’s thoughts on these two auction houses from a Seller’s perspective. Winebid had significantly lower appraisal values than HDH pretty much across the board but charges a significantly lower commission. I’m sort of at a loss to understand how they could have such different appraisal amounts and wanted to see if others on the Board could weigh in on their experiences. I’m sort of leaning towards HDH but don’t want a situation where I pay to ship my wine to HDH and then it turns out there appraisals were artificially inflated and I’m stuck having to cut the price of the reserves to get the wine sold, essentially getting the same value that I would have gotten from Winebid but for a much higher commission. The other explanation could be that Buyer’s are more trustworthy of HDH and the provenance of its wines sold and therefore wines sold there command higher dollars. Thoughts?
What kind of wines are you selling? What sort of quantities? Those two houses have very different buyer bases. I would also suggest getting estimates from Heritage Auctions. They do not charge any seller’s commissions or fees and results are often comparable, if not exceeding those of other houses.
Full disclosure: I used to work for Heritage.
Mostly California Cults.
give wally’s a look.
K&L auctions seem to do pretty well on these kinds of wines.
Doesn’t Winebid still charge a fee to both the seller and the buyer, thus increasing their total commission charged?
Bruce
Winebid charges 15% for the buyer (14% + 1% insurance), and roughly 15% for the seller (I think this can vary a bit, depending on the quantity/quality of wines being sold). Figure a total vig of about 30%.
Yes, Winebid charges a buyer’s and seller’s commission. It’s 18% for sellers, only less if the total consignment estimate is fairly large (>$5000?, I am not sure). Also, there is a minimum total consignment of $2500 to sell at Winebid even at the 18% commission.
I’ve sold via WineBid several times, it went fine. Every wine I auctioned was bought for at least the estimate provided by Winebid, so they appear to be quite good at knowing their buying audience (though some individual lots took much longer to sell than others).
I have sold a fair amount of wine through HDH retail (not auction) Their customer service is excellent and my wines have always listed at the exact same price that there were appraised at. That being said I have never had any damaged labels, bad foils etc. If you can live with their commission and other terms of contract I highly recommend them. One thing I will say is that it is very difficult with their online system to track when your bottles have sold. They do send you a monthly statement via email.
George
HDH retail consignment is the way to go. They were spot on with their pricing and sell through rate within 6 months. Would definitely recommend selling through them.
Winebid is now $10K+ for 15%.
They used to give you a lower percentage based on previous work you did with them, but not anymore.
BUT, everything is Negotiable, as auction houses will fight a little for your biz if they are harder to acquire Cults.
Correct me if I’m not seeing this correctly but as a Seller, Winebid’s Seller’s commission rate is irrelevant, it’s the total commission which matters, since I’m effectively paying the Buyer and the Seller’s commission since any intelligent bidder is going to factor the 15% Buyer comission in their bid.
For Josh and George, in your experience with HDH have you found that your wines actually sold at the price they were appraised at?
HDH is absolutely first rate.
Winebid is a crapshoot compared to them.
They tend to be honest on valuation and sell retail those things that won’t auction well.
Many of their lots go well beyond the estimate.
The wine is listed at the appraised value and can only be sold at that amount. It is not an auction. Sometimes if a wine does not sell the price can/will be lowered but I have always been asked first. In my case the wine wasn’t selling as it was initially overpriced.
George
I was 99% sold after 6 months with about 50% selling in first 30 days…
its not even a fair fight. HDH by a mile.
Isn’t going HDH retail, not auction, more a question of comparing the net with them vs the net with another online broker such as Flickinger, Benchmark, Blicker Pierce, etc? A question of whether their email list will get wines sold at a high enough price to make up for their extra commission on retail vs the others. Seems that there isn’t a reason to pay higher commissions to merely sell off of Wine-Searcher over a 6-12+ month period. I would hazard a guess that HDH will be able to sell a portion at higher prices - just a question of whether overall across the whole collection the net will be better.
I have always had a tremendous amount of respect for HDH and their operation and staff, and wouldn’t hesitate to do business with them, but at least when I looked into it a number of years ago I made the judgment that they wouldn’t net me higher than going with another broker at a lower commission rate. At that point I think the spread was something like 10-12% higher commission at HDH. Pure judgment call but felt more comfortable with a 10% cushion on pricing to get everything sold and to be able to net the same after commission - went with Flickinger and was very pleased.
What is the spread in commission now? Maybe it is lower now.
I don’t have an opinion on Winebid since I don’t follow their auctions (well except for some very high prices they have been getting on SQNs). However, I suspect they are more interested in maintaining a lower reserve for the auction and so that is why their appraisal was lower.
if we broaden the question beyond hdh v winebid its a much different question. there are 100 factors that cannot be quantified here that would matter in a broader comparison. seems the OP is asking specifically about these two options
Yes, admittedly I was broadening the question but in a way that I would suggest to the OP might be worth the time/effort…
Dan, no I appreciate the point and am more than open to other suggestions. I’m interested in getting the highest net return on my wines and if there are other retail or auction businesses, I’d appreciate everyone’s thoughts/recommendations. For context, I’d say that the amount of wine that I’m looking to sell this go around is approximately $25-35k (prior to commission) Return is more important than getting the money quickly but I don’t want to be waiting for more than 6 months to get the bulk of my money either. I’m also not interested in paying to ship my wine somewhere only to have to pay to ship back a sizable portion of it at a later date. I have so far submitted my cellar inventory to HDH, Winebid, Benchmark and Wally’s for appraisal and have heard back from all but Wally’s thus far.