Auction of P4 fitted RTR modern image items

[sjp23480]

I came across the following auction by Warrington & Northwich which includes a large number of modern image RTR items fitted with P4 wheel sets.  Not much good to me but thought it might interest others: https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/warrington/catalogue-id-warrin10487. I suspect there might be some bargains to be had.  Auction starts at 4pm on Wednesday 13tht

 

Steve

[Joseph_Pestell]

Going down the list, some of the rolling stock is 00 or still has the 00 wheelsets to convert back from P4.

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Eyewatering postage, especially if you only want one item.

 

Mike.

[JeffP]

Beat me to it.

[pheaton]

+20% buyers commission + 20% VAT plus postage....

[DCB]

Web site says   

 

Additional Fees:

Commissions*:29.94% Inc.VAT/sales tax

*Includes buyer's premium and online commission. For more information please read the auctioneer's T&Cs.

 

Think I'll stick to eBay.

[johndon]

I was interested in some of the items and, yesterday, bid on three of them in advance.  As I would on eBay, I placed the maximum bid I was prepared to pay and then just left it for the auction to go ahead.

 

Just checked and I lost out on two items to high bids but, on the third item, I lost yet the item sold for the maximum amount that I had bid - is this normal for this sort of things, i.e. a later bid for the same amount wins, I would have thought that, to win, someone would have had to have bid higher than me...

[Joseph_Pestell]

I have had the same problem on eBay.

[Skinnylinny]

I can't speak for the actual auction house, but on eBay, if two bidders bid the same maximum amount, the earliest bid takes priority.

[johndon]

38 minutes ago, Skinnylinny said:

I can't speak for the actual auction house, but on eBay, if two bidders bid the same maximum amount, the earliest bid takes priority.

 

Not in this case although I have since had an explanation from the auction house...

 

My max bid for this item was £45 which I placed yesterday and I was confirmed as the leading bidder.  The auction opened at £35 so the system automatically bid £40 for me at which point I was still the leading bidder.  At that point, someone watching the auction live placed a bid of £45.  As my maximum bid was £45, I was no longer able to beat the current bid so my auto bid of £45 was ignored despite being placed earlier than the 'live' bid...

 

 

[Il Grifone]

That sounds like complete BS to me and in addition their fees are exorbitant (they'll have taken a cut from the seller as well!).

And I thought eBay was a rip off....

Edited May 13, 2020 by Il Grifone

[Enterprisingwestern]

16 minutes ago, Il Grifone said:

That sounds like complete BS to me and in addition their fees are exorbitant (they'll have taken a cut from the seller as well!).

And i thought eBay were a rip off....

 

Just what I thought, it makes me smile when some say eBay is expensive!

 

Also, having now looked at the prices achieved, I reckon the unfortunate seller is at least 50% light, plus he's got fees to pay from the meagre prices achieved. I wonder if any of our well known eBay usual suspects picked anything up?

 

Mike.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Enterprisingwestern

[Il Grifone]

5 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Just what I thought, it makes me smile when some say eBay is expensive!

 

Also, having now looked at the prices achieved, I reckon the unfortunate seller is at least 50% light, plus he's got fees to pay from the meagre prices achieved. I wonder if any of our well known eBay usual suspects picked anything up?

 

Mike.

 

This will undoubtedly be one of their sources. In addition they'll know how to play the system (Not suggesting fraud, of course, just experience!)

 

We made the mistake of selling some items by auction when we moved from Torquay. With hindsight (always 20/20!) we wouldn't have bothered!

[Damo666]

59 minutes ago, johndon said:

My max bid for this item was £45 which I placed yesterday and I was confirmed as the leading bidder.  The auction opened at £35 so the system automatically bid £40 for me at which point I was still the leading bidder.  At that point, someone watching the auction live placed a bid of £45.  As my maximum bid was £45, I was no longer able to beat the current bid so my auto bid of £45 was ignored despite being placed earlier than the 'live' bid...

 

It's an unfortunate way for the Auction House to operate, as it doesn't seem intrinsically fair.

 

In your scenario I would have expected the other bidder's bid to have been immediately rejected as you had already bid £45, so the other person then should have been given the option to either walk away or offer £50. You had offered the winning  amount first, otherwise the auction house wouldn't have accepted it.

[johndon]

I was surprised that all but one of the items appeared to have sold, didn’t think there’d be that much interest with the conversions to P4. 

[Enterprisingwestern]

9 minutes ago, johndon said:

I was surprised that all but one of the items appeared to have sold, didn’t think there’d be that much interest with the conversions to P4. 

 

Turn it on its head though, and you've got sound fitted locos that can be cheaply and easily converted back to narrow gauge, and at least one loco still had the alternative wheels with it.

 

Mike.

[Damo666]

1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

Turn it on its head though, and you've got sound fitted locos that can be cheaply and easily converted back to narrow gauge, and at least one loco still had the alternative wheels with it.

 

Out of interest, how would you convert them back to OO if the Loco doesn't come with the original OO wheels?  I thought that the original manufacturer's wheels would be needed, especially those axels with gears.

[melmerby]

4 x various Hornby SR wagons went for £20 Plus £18 postage = £38 plus vat, plus commision of 29.94% total = £50

Hardly a bargain for the buyer or a decent price for the seller.

[PMP]

21 minutes ago, Damo666 said:

 

Out of interest, how would you convert them back to OO if the Loco doesn't come with the original OO wheels?  I thought that the original manufacturer's wheels would be needed, especially those axels with gears.

By replacing the wheels on the axle with OO profile wheels. The overlength axles will still fit inside the bogie frames, particularly on the HJ models, so an easy swap. If the P&P had been cheaper, eg around £10 (Bearing in mind auctioneer gas to pay staff/timeetc), I think they’d have got better prices. The sound fitted loco’s weren’t a bad price for the buyers.

[Enterprisingwestern]

10 hours ago, Damo666 said:

 

Out of interest, how would you convert them back to OO if the Loco doesn't come with the original OO wheels?  I thought that the original manufacturer's wheels would be needed, especially those axels with gears.

 

Plan A;

 

https://howesmodels.co.uk/product/oo-general-spares/

 

When available, or from a famous auction site.

 

Plan B;

 

A nice request on RMWeb to those of us on here who have spare wheel sets from converting our locomotives.

 

Both are even easier than Paul's perfectly acceptable solution.

 

Mike.

 

 

 

 

[hayfield]

On 13/05/2020 at 21:28, johndon said:

I was surprised that all but one of the items appeared to have sold, didn’t think there’d be that much interest with the conversions to P4. 

 

I looked at the items, and without looking at the commission which would be added I looked at the P&P at £18. I have just won on eBay 2 Southeastern Finecast (one built and one part built) but both with wheels and gears, including postage by coincidence both cane out at just over £36. The kits without wheels motors and gears are £90ish + about £70 each for wheels motor and gears

 

Looking at the charges from this auction house each would have cost me £60+ by adding their commission and the difference in P&P Your £45 bid would have come in at about £75 all in

 

And I wonder how much of the £45 the seller received? 

[johndon]

10 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

Your £45 bid would have come in at about £75 all in

 

 

I did take that in to account with all three of the items I bid on.

[hayfield]

I often wonder why so many sell at local auctions, OK if its an expensive lot which may attract several bidders. But when you look at their charges, VAT and the buyers premium you are looking at nearly 50% in commission and taxes, plus for model railway items you are more likely to get a wholesale price, Did they also levy a listing fee ?

 

As a buyer I guess if buying a few items the cost of carriage is split several ways. However £18 (and was it plus tax ?) for sending one loco is very expensive.

 

Last weekend I sold a loco for just under £100 on eBay and paid £1 commission and charged £6.50 towards the cost of sending it via Special Delivery (£8.30), OK there was a bit more I had to pay Paypal. What gets me is some folk moan about how much eBay charge. Without considering how much you would have to pay or receive with other alternatives

 

I don't think selling at auction I would have got anywhere near £100 for the loco. And would have faced much larger charges.

 

A good call on flagging up the sale, but it was a real eye opener 

[johnb]

Use of a local auction house is very understandable if the owner just wants to get shot of the lot without hassle and is not too concerned about maximising the cash. I'm thinking here of health reasons (maybe involving a house sale/move)  or an estate sale. In both cases there's very probably more than enough else to do without using ebay or similar routes.

A local auction house just turns up, loads all the unwanted stuff and takes it away, simple!

[Damo666]

15 hours ago, hayfield said:

I looked at the items, and without looking at the commission which would be added I looked at the P&P at £18. I have just won on eBay 2 Southeastern Finecast (one built and one part built) but both with wheels and gears, including postage by coincidence both cane out at just over £36. The kits without wheels motors and gears are £90ish + about £70 each for wheels motor and gears

 

Looking at the charges from this auction house each would have cost me £60+ by adding their commission and the difference in P&P Your £45 bid would have come in at about £75 all in

 

And I wonder how much of the £45 the seller received? 

 

5 hours ago, hayfield said:

But when you look at their charges, VAT and the buyers premium you are looking at nearly 50% in commission and taxes, plus for model railway items you are more likely to get a wholesale price, Did they also levy a listing fee ?

 

I too took the overall commission, VAT and Salesroom surcharges into account before bidding, you’ve got to. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known how much my maximum big should be.

 

I also researched the price of new and second-hand models to get an idea of what their current value might be.

 

I agree, the commission and other charges did appear high, plus the postage too, but I just deducted this from the max figure I was prepared to bid on. As others have said, decide what this should be and never go over it.

 

For future reference, there was a commission and debit card fee and VAT which totalled 29.94%

There was also postage of £21.60 (£18 +VAT) for the first item.

If you bought a second item the postage was a far more reasonable £2.40 (£2 +VAT), so if you bought more than 2 items the relative postage went down per item (still high I agree, but factor this in before bidding).

One other charge was something called ‘Saleroom Internet Surcharge’. What on earth this was for I don’t know, or even why such a charge should exist, but it was there and I knew it beforehand, so again factor this in.

 

So some examples:

A winning bid of £40 actually cost £49.60 before postage.

A winning bid of £45 cost £55.80 before postage.

( I know, this doesn’t correspond to the 29.94% uplift I quoted above, but I’ve taken these final costs from my invoice)

 

I won 3 bids (the 3rd I hadn’t really planned on bidding on, but got caught up in the auction after narrowly missing out on a loco I did bid on).

 

When I look back on what each loco cost me, including the:

·         Commission

·         Card fee

·         Postage and the

·         VAT on all of the above (there doesn’t seem to be any VAT on the actual item, only the Auction House charges)

·         Saleroom Internet Surcharge

The cost per loco was an uplift of between 53% for the lower winning bids to 40% for the higher winning bid. @hayfield you are pretty much spot-on.

For the above percentage calculation I split the postage equally over the 3 locos.

 

HTH in any further auction you may consider, this was my first time.

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Damo666
Slight typo clarification on overall % calculation.