HDH always have had very high hammers. The gap now is even greater. Anyone has an explanation?
Are you saying, for the same wine, HDH averages higher all-in prices than other auction houses? I have not found that to be the case, but maybe we are looking at different things
Do a comparison to other houses. For example HDH vig is still 19.5% I think. No sales tax. Cheap shipping. Zachy’s is 24.5% I think. They charge sales tax and shipping is not cheap. Adds about 15% to final price. Also HDH is probably the one house I trust the most for vetting wines.
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Alex,
HDH all in prices are higher than other auction houses in general based on my observation.
Transparency in wine auctions is lacking, imho. I find myself wondering at KLWines auctions lately. With less than 1min remaining I bid $227 and was outbid, but then mysteriously my competitor was also outbid an instant later, not by an automatic bid (indicated by grey text) but by a new bidder with my same first letter J***.
That by itself may be plausible but when an identical lot immediately appears on the auction block, well don’t you wonder if that final bid is really an algorithmic shill bid that triggers whenever an unannounced reserve price hasn’t been met? It’s a little conspicuous and would be, I’m pretty sure, illegal.
Maybe just sour grapes that I missed out on a swell price.
Closed lot
https://m.klwines.com/Auction/BidDetail/1567707
Immediate new lot
https://m.klwines.com/Auction/BidDetail/1568863
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This. My exact thoughts
Seems simple to me … HDH has at least equal, if not superior, reputation as to professionalism and authentication as anyone else in the business and the transactional costs (sales tax, vig) is a combined 19.5% whereas for some competitors, it’s in excess of 30% — which is kind of an insanely high number if you think about it.
K&L also seems to get a ridiculous premium compared to WineBid for California wines, especially. For Old World wines, the prices are much more comparable.
I looked at a sample of the the latest HDH results vs the last 6 months of auction house results from all other houses (all data from WMJ). My sample was about 100 DRC lots (they are very liquid). I looked all lots with at least 5 sales points since March (and at least 2 non HDH points). The average all-in over for HDH is about 6% which is roughly the tax difference. About 25% of the time HDH was under the average all-in of non-HDH houses.
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Thanks Alex. I had previously compared a couple lots and come to the same conclusion, but tend to buy from HDH auctions (if at all) because their shipping is very easy (or I can pick it up on my way to/from DC) and I don’t see other particular downsides.
Makes sense. There are clearly other factors in play when participating than just the final price. Even in this analysis there are other factors like OWC premiums that, when accounted for, bring you in a bit closer to straight parity, but I didn’t add those as they are a guess vs the straight facts.
I buy from all the houses because, as you should expect from a semi-efficient market, on average they should all be about the same all-in. While on average that should be true, each lot is usually thinnly traded and you should expect a lot of variance (the variance was about +/- 26%). That should show you how much price discovery is available.
Neither link works for me
FYI, not uncommon on K&L to have sniping behavior (last minute bids) with < 1min left.
For multiples of the same lot, if a seller is auctioning many bottles of the same wine, they’d might want to chunk up their lots into smaller manageable lots. I know K&L’s internal auction lot scheduler also doesn’t want to schedule the same wine lots simultaneously. This ends up having lots of the same thing go up immediately after the previous one is done. In this case, it can be a hint that at least it’s part of the same single owner (esp if the provenance owner description is the same). I’ve used that info/hint as a buyer to get a sense that I’m probably buying from the same “batch/owner” on a particular lot to help with recording my estimated provenance.
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Both say page not found. Out of date links?
I get to both links just fine.
3 bottles of 2016 Joseph Drouhin Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru. Ended 10/9. Closed at $236
Another 3 bottles of the same wine ending 10/16. Starting bid at $180.
Same exact provenance note:
From a Southern California collector, all wines were purchased through reputable sources and stored in a climate controlled cellar.
Could be the same lot. Could be the seller is releasing lots in small quantities to keep prices up.
HDH has a far superior interface, live online bidding, etc, than any other house. If you’re going to concentrate your effort on one house it’s the easiest.
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Taxes and vig are a big incentive to many - it creates loyalty and goodwill because you don’t feel like the auction house is sticking it to you - just some idiot bidding at his first auction. As someone who has been buying at auction for years, my opinion is that HDH is perhaps one of the better/best run operations. Have you ever bought anything at Sotheby’s? Getting the wine shipped these days from them is like moving mountains. The bureaucracy is incredible and they have tons of turnover. With HDH, you can drive to Delaware and pick things up; super convenient. And compared to other operations? Acker - ugh, no, they have the stain of Rudy and I will not buy from them. Zachys - the customer service is very poor (in my experience) - so no thanks. I remember the time I bought six bottles of something (retail) and five showed-up. Just no explanation. After numerous calls, it turns out that they were short a bottle. OK…thanks for letting me know. That is a not uncommon experience. I have not bought at Christies in some years.
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What do people think of Spectrum (aside from the premium)?
For what I’m looking for it’s only panned out once for me. Otherwise I find most lots are chasing high fills.
Also, the system is terrible and they have a spotty past.
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I’m selling some stuff with HDH in November. They rejected 3 of my bottles which I could argue about but it shows that they are conservative on what they take on for consignments.
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I agree that the hammer prices at HDH seem a bit higher than a couple others. Having said that, I havent used every auction house. I am willing to take the extra cost due to the zero tax and the fact I can pick up the wine close by in DE. I also think HDH publishes a lower estimate than some of the other houses, at least it seems like that to me.