125 Sovereigns for sale at auction

[Melon]

3 hours ago, goldking said:

As noted above, they're from an estate so there's a high chance that the relatives aren't personally dealing with it and have gone with a third party company (solicitor?) to sort it.  They will just go with whatever is easiest so off to the auction house it goes.  I mentioned in the 'today I received' thread about my auction experience today - sovs were selling at £227 and there's a 22.2% buyer's (incl VAT) commission on top which made them £277.39, around £1.50 under spot (£279) at the time.  So the seller has already lost out to the tune of £50 there in round numbers.  But that's not all!  The seller's commission is 18% (incl VAT) on the hammer price + £4+VAT per lot whether it sells or not !  If my calculations are right : £227 + 18% = £40.86 + £4 + 20% = £4.80 = £45.66.  £227 - £45.66 = £181.34 per sov.  On the 100 sovs today at Sheffield, that's a loss of £9766 by selling through the auction rather than the free market. 

It's nuts. It's not even easier, walking in to a dealer and selling the lot would be much easier, instant, and they'd have probably made an extra £9k. I'd be suing that solicitor if I found out there were chucking away my money like that. 

[trp]

My life is spent going round auctions. It’s really not uncommon to see people’s entire collections go under the hammer, pretty sad too. Usually it is as @goldking has said and in my opinion down to a lazy or uniformed Solicitor/Executor of someone’s will, that wants to do the minimum donkey work. Only real winner here will be the Auction House.

[Foster88]

I watched some of these sovereigns go through on The Saleroom, most went for £250/£260 each. Add in the fees for the buyer, they paid £310+ per sovereign. Some were very nice and in good condition but the 2019 sovereign that went for £280 hammer price plus fees shocked me. £320+ for a 2019 sovereign. Madness!!

The seller who I imagine is the beneficiary obviously hadn’t got a clue as to their true value. Maybe it’s a case of they’re getting something from something they never had for minimal effort.

Who knows.

[Empire]

I've been having a look on Easy Live auctions, trying to pick up some cheap scrap gold, but it seems to be selling for way over spot, once you take into consideration the hefty buyers premiums. Very odd.