I received an email from WineBid about consigning with them. Anyone here have any experience in dealing with them as a seller? Do the wines sell pretty quickly? What kind of commissions do they take from the sale? Any info is appreciated. Thanks.
Do not deal sell on winebid.
One of their two reps, Sterling is arguably the biggest DBag you will ever come across. Completely unprofessional, rude, and a total jerk. I asked him to appraise a few of my bottles I was thinking about selling. He came back with a number I wasn’t comfortable with so I decided to keep them instead.
A couple months later I asked him to help sell about 7-8k worth of wine and a side from the douchey response he refused to take the business out of spite.
Good to buy from by I would highly suggest selling or consigning elsewhere.
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I’ve sold a couple lots through them and have had nothing but good experiences, and I dealt with Sterling as well. He once sent someone to my house, in the middle of nowhere in the Hudson Valley, to pick up what I’m sure was a rather small consignment for them. Another time they picked up at my office in the city, both times at no additional cost.
They take something like 20% and send a check in 30 days. They are sticklers about condition though, they won’t take pushed or soft corks, any whites that show too dark for their age, or anything even slightly suspect in the labeling/packaging.
In my opinion it’s well worth it if you have any wines that you know will do well in that marketplace.
I had a good experience selling a very small smattering of stuff that wouldn’t make sense for a regular auction house. Got decent prices across the board. I also dealt with Sterling and had no problems.
I had never sold in 25+ years collecting , but had lots of excess and too many onesies/twosies. Did a couple of consignments, $3-4K each, happy with sales price, thought fees were fair. Both times 75%+ sold first week, everything in a month. If I was selling my entire cellar, with the prized bottles and (a few) full cases, I’d probably search elsewhere. But if a couple dozen random bottles, Winebid for sure
K&L gets better prices.
Thanks for all the feedback, guys. Really appreciate it.
That depends on what it is. K&L won’t auction every day stuff, only higher end bottles and well known names. They’ll buy outright, but my experience is that their price is not better than what you’d net from Winebid, and they won’t take everything in a lot, they’ll still reject some bottles. That’s my experience fwiw. I’d run the list past both, and see if there is an advantage one way or the other, including shipping the wines.
Good evening Denny,
Lots of experience- I have been buying and selling there almost 20 years. As a matter of proper disclosure, I should also note that on occasions where I have referred them a cellar, I have received commissions. So I do have a financial interest, of sorts, in addition to my own positive experiences.
The commission scale varies depending on the appraised value of the collection, and is also cumulative to some extent. So, if you were to send several consignments within a year- your commission rate on later consignments could go down potentially depending on various factors.
Right now winebid is doing incredibly well, and the time it takes to sell a collection is shorter than usual. I actually had one consignment sell almost completely in the first week recently- but that is incredibly rare. It really depends on the current demand for what you are selling and whether someone else is also selling bottles of the same wine. What is important is that across the board they are achieving very good prices for consignors- even at the very high end where in the past they tended to lag a bit behind the larger auction houses.
If you consign, you will be given an option to have your bottles sit at the same reserve for a set period of time, or automatically go down a bid increment as unsold bottles roll into future auctions. Generally I have found with the latter that wines stay at the same reserve for the first two weeks, but then drop an increment each week until sold. The exception to that is if part of a lot sells in a given week. So, for example, let us say you have 4 bottles of Silver Oak that are in their fourth week and the reserve has dropped to $75 a bottle. During that week, 1 bottle sells at $75. The remaining 3 will usually stay at $75 the following week and not drop again until a full week auction cycle goes by without another bottle selling.
Busy as they are right now, I would allow a few days to get a response, plus a week or two to go through the process, have your bottles picked up and then transferred to Napa and put up for sale. Settlements are mailed or wired (your choice- the latter option for a fee under a certain dollar amount) about 6 weeks after auction close. So, realistically you are looking at about 60 days out to get your first check from the moment you have the initial discussion. The total number of weeks required to sell everything really varies. German wines do well at winebid, but tend to be slow sellers as they are everywhere else. And one thing people often overlook- as you put a list together, don’t be afraid to fill up partial boxes with odds and ends that might only be worth $30 or so each. NV champagnes and other more common bottles do tend to sell nicely, if a bit below retail since they are widely available. But if you no longer want such bottles, it is a good time to get rid of them by adding them to your main consignment. When people are bidding on winebid, many will want to get the most out of their shipping cost by buying in full case lots. $30 and under bottles are good way for them to get to a full case without spending too much more- and such bottles go fairly quickly.
Very generally- you should expect most everything to sell within 6 weeks.
And do not worry too much about the condition notations. They are VERY picky these days and will certainly still auction sound bottles with torn labels etc- but they disclose every single little thing. The market knows this (and appreciates it) and takes it into consideration. I have not found that minor condition issues have a significant impact on sale price in the consignments I have sent- in fact they rarely make a difference at all.
Wow… thanks for the very detailed information, Tom! Really, really appreciate it!
I’ve had two decent-sized consignments with WB over the past year. Dealt with Sterling on each. Both experiences met expectations. Service was stellar; early-stage negotiations/discussions and getting up-to-speed on machinations of the platform a little tense but for the most part palatable. Most impressive was response time. Sterling makes himself available 24/7. Send an email and a response is fired back often within a matter of minutes. The convenience of having someone come to my house and take the consignment(s) out of my cellar removes a lot of grunt work. They talk about algorithms that keep a contemporary pulse of current prices. Have never thoroughly tested that and do wonder whether it’s more a marketing tool than anything else. But, ultimately, it’s up to the seller to do his/her homework and grasp the realistic current-day value of what’s being sold. Pricing is so fluid these days as I’m sure everyone on this board knows. But overall, WB and Sterling, at least relative to my experiences, are true-to-their messaging/words and they continue to be my marketplace of choice despite the myriad options out there.
Sold a lot of wine through WineBid successfully, with Gence handling the consignment. Ask for him (if he’s still there).
No longer there.
K&L has never deigned to refuse any of the wine I’ve listed for them. It depends, to some degree, where you live. I live in San Francisco, so I can just head over to Soma to deliver my wine and they have a lower sellers’s commission. It is 0% for store credit. My experience of late (and I don’t buy “cult wines” anymore) is that they are simply offering a set amount which is more than fair. WineBid lies about provenance; I know this as a seller~when I made no declaration as follows (but they did): “Consignor is original owner.” They have finally started including VN scores but they are slow in updating all scores. For buyers the fee is now 18%.
Dealt with them many times and it was always with Sterling Roig. A few small 10k-15k consignments and one rather large one. He picked up and once I dropped off in Jersey. He is a no nonsense kind of guy and if you’re looking for a suit & tie experience he’s not the one. I like him and he does what he says. Checks come quick and % is based on how much you list. One thing I would do different is have them space out the lots over a course of weeks. I listed too many of the same bottles, at one time, and I think it hurt a little bit. Don’t hesitate to hit Sterling up.
This was precisely the vibe I’ve dealt with. Ended up consigning anyway because of convenience offered in connection with pickups from my wine storage facility, but the attitude is awful every time.