HDH Burgundy Auction - shipping

I’ve only participated in a couple HDH auctions, all in Chicago. They were able to ship my winnings to their “storage partner” here in Portland for a reasonable price (the alternative was almost $100 to ship six bottles to my house).

For the upcoming Burgundy auction, I received an email from HDH that because the auction is happening in Delaware, “all purchases must be picked up at our New Castle, DE warehouse or shipped outside of the U.S. If you are unable to pick up your order, you may authorize an agent or shipping agent to pick up on your behalf.”

Anybody have experience with how exactly this works for people who can’t pickup in person?

Good Luck, HDH decision to move to Delaware has precluded any desire to do business with them. Hope they’re saving lots of tax money because the pain in the ass of arranging shipping means they won’t be seeing any more of my money.

lots of retailers/auction house use third party shippers. May not be as difficult as it seems

actually pretty easy to get shipped not that different from before. they just aren’t printing labels themselves

Cool…guess it’s time to give them a call…Thanks

I went ahead and emailed HDH. They provided a list of eight companies that could potentially arrange shipping. With the small quantities I’m interested in and the distance involved, I suspect it’s not going to be worth it.

Thanks for the replies, all.

I contacted most on the list for quotes. VinBrucke is the most responsive and seems to have the best price.

Isn’t it possible to have FedEx or UPS pick up from their New Castle facility? As long as you’re in a state that permits alcohol shipments, wouldn’t this would be like any other pick up where you only need an account to fill out the information and pay on-line?

I live in MD and plan to drive over once travel restrictions clear.

VinBrucke does ship via FedEx. Don’t know the legal requirements, HDH probably can’t ship?

I’m having my winnings picked up by my storage facility. Seems to be a set fee and then a $ amount added per box/item. Either way - all via temperature controlled transport. Easy!

Set up a collection day with HDH, call when you get there, and they’ll send out your auction bootie to be put in your trunk. No interpersonal contact at all.

I am startled that the cheapest cross country shipping – Fedex ground – seems to be $92. I guess I’ve been out of the loop a while.

Given that you live in Chicago, I would assume this decision saves YOU lots of money in sales tax as well, no? By transferring title to you in Delaware, you’re getting to take advantage of their 0% tax rate. According to some quick Google-machine-ing, you’d otherwise effectively pay an additional ~10% buyers premium for the “convenience” of spending, I assume, about an hour to pick up wine yourself. At something like ~$50/case for ground shipping from DE to IL, that should wind up resulting in considerable savings to have the wine delivered right to your door instead.

FWIW, Domaine - which has a facility in Chicago - charges $40/case and it’s temp-controlled the whole way, so (while it takes a few months in practice), you can even “ship” wines in the Summer.

Only when the case value (with buyer’s premium) is more than 10x the shipping cost, isn’t it? For example, if I win a case for $250 ($300 with buyer’s premium), I would have paid the $30 sales tax instead of the $50 shipping cost. Another complication is the OWC/OC, you have to pay extra to ship them separately.

Easy for me. Wine storage place in NJ gets delivery and charges me I think $10 a case. Then instead of having it shipped from delivery storage place, I just drive over and pick it up. I think the only change is that they used to not charge when getting delivery from Chicago. Still a very good deal! Only Heritage is cheaper (free) but I have to go to the Bronx to pick up.

same here. I just got a $10.00 charge for a Delaware pick up.