At Antiques Hunters we offer very good prices for items you may have for sale . Sometimes people ask if an Auction would be the best route for them when selling , in some cases with very rare items or important paintings ect our advise would be to go to Auction, but for run of the mill items such as general antiques , medals , jewellery , silver and scrap gold the answer would be definitely notand here for example is the reason why.
Auctions chargebuyers and sellers a commission and usually end up with between 30 to 45% of the value of the transaction. Also there are usually charges for collecting your items and storing them if they do not sell.
Say for example if I want to pay a total of £200 for an item that has been put in to a local auction and the buyers premium is 25% plus VAT, this means the hammer price for me to spend the £200 would need to be £155 which would equate to me paying a total of £201:50. when the premium is added. On the other hand the vendor of this item after paying the commission of 15% plus VAT and a 1% plus VAT insurance fee would received £127:70 , this leaves the seller with almost £73:00 less than the price I have actually paid for the item, if they had sold the item directly to me they would be £73:00 better off and would have been paid cash on the day of the transaction. (not a cheque in the post four weeks after the sale)