This week Star Wars revisited and scams to avoid at off-line auction.
In my post of 20th December titled Tips for making Money in 2007 I pointed out
How this year is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars and anything connected to the entertaining films should be making good money. It seems I understated good money.
At a
To play Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars was sold for £54,000. The lot was the highlight in the auction of some 400 film and TV outfits, a packed saleroom at Bonhams in Knightsbridge saw individual items fetch up to 20 times their estimated price.
In the era we live in now of film, TV and celebrity star it seems that anything connected to those subjects will make you money In the UK we have a much loved TV program called Only Fools and Horses staring David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst in one episode they dressed up as Batman and Robin at the same auction the costumes were sold for £10,200. So were could we get some memorabilia for ourselves, well the obvious place to start is eBay and I have included two other sites for you to look at.
Scams to Avoid at Auction.The Switch.
Okay my thanks once again to Phil of Basildon for his relevant information on this.
First off you can not tar all auction houses with the same brush most run an honest and straight forward auction, but there are some that don't and you need to be aware
Of the scams.
· The switch
You visit the auction and a box of mixed collectibles catches your eye , you notice that while most of the content is rubbish there are one or two items that are valuable
And basically make the lot worth bidding for .
You make your bid win the lot , happy you pay your money ,return to your lot and find that one or two individual items you wanted have disappeared . Stolen or more likely switched to another lot, someone else has also spotted the same items as you and has put the interesting articles into another lot that (a) they know that no one will bid on this and (b)
They get to pay a lot less for the items.
Phil says that at the smaller auction this type of thing goes on all the time. Phil now regularly tries to take a friend with him when he goes to auction He says he has lost count of the number of times he has got home to find items he knew were in the lot go missing.
Remember the auction company is not liable for the safety of your goods after the sale ,once the hammer goes down there yours so be alert.
Before you bid on anything at an auction read the terms and conditions of the auction house .You need to be aware that on top of your winning bid there will be charges, such as buyer's commission and statutory taxes.
· Off the Wall
This rarely happens in reputable auction houses but else where well!
Auction houses make money in a number of ways, two of these are they charge a flat fee to put an item into auction and then charge a % of the final price. So the higher they can get a bid the more the house makes.
Off the wall means precisely that , you might be the only one bidding on an item but a dishonest auctioneer will be reading your face to see how far he can push you to bid,
And he will literally be taking bids off the wall. To counter this confuse him , don't rush to bid try to look as if you are losing interest at every bidding stage.
I hope the above has been helpful to you, remember not all auction houses are dishonest but these and other scams to happen , just be aware of them.
Next week 5 tips on buying at offline auctions.
Have a good week .
Happy Hunting
Chris-Allan.
No comments:
Post a Comment