Yeah I’m not a big fan of buyers premium, especially when it’s a percentage. 20% on fanatics collect is quite a lot, sure it might be ok for low-mid value cards but it adds up quickly. We’re talking a 5k bid is actually 6k (not including shipping, cc fees, and international transaction fees if you’re not in the US).
I’d still bid on something but the premium absolutely becomes part of the price. I.e that 5k bid is actually a 6k bid
The thing I don’t like is the extended bidding, it’s a money making measure for the auction house disguised as an equality measure for the buyers and a bonus to the sellers
Every time someone bids just a little bit more the auction is going to extend. Eventually every time it extends, it extends just a little bit less. This is a really great combo of FOMO and the sunk cost fallacy. “Well I was already ok with paying 1200, what’s an extra 50, if I don’t buy it now I might not get another chance”. Then 25 anxiety inducing minutes later someone else thinks the same thing and drives the price up even further. The cycle continues
Sure yeah, this increases the income for the seller but the auction house is the real winner here. Every 5 dollars for the seller is a dollar for the auction house
For reference, I saw a psa 10 1st edition shining magikarp card I was interested in just keep getting extended over and over again. I think it legitimately went for multiple hours. When I bid shortly before the first extension it was just above market value. MV in this case being 3.5k - at least as far as I can find. Anyway, this card went for 5.5k (with the premium I think). That person spent an extra 2k on anxiety and an extra few hours of their life too
I much prefer max-bids rather than bidding extension. You put in the max you’re comfortable with, if someone else’s max is higher you will immediately be outbid by a certain amount. If someone bids lower than your max bid, you will immediately become the top bidder. You won’t truly know what the current max bid is so I think it encourages people to really think about how much they actually want to bid. They can also just snail crawl their max bids up until they are the top bidder if they really want.
Max-bidding might not be the best, it doesn’t fully prevent sniping and some people might put in ridiculously high max-bids they probably shouldn’t have - but at least you won’t have to spend hours of your precious life bidding way more than you ever intended to on something not worth the price that you might not even win because there’s always someone more desperate
I despise the bidding extension.
Buyer premium is just one factor if that.
