I’ve received quotes from benchmark, hdh and Flickinger and HDH was best for the wines I was looking to sell.
Benchmark used to have some interesting options re when you get paid, i.e. If you wanted them to pay immediately before wines were sold you would but you would receive about 25-30% less than waiting 90 days (I did use them for a sale once with the 90 day option).
Overall though, HDH was a better experience and best net for me.
If you have solid cases in OWC of collectibles then perhaps auction is a good route but auction houses will want moderate reserves and there will be some risk but they would argue that you will do fine overall. At least in my opinion if you do not have solid cases of high fliers then I think either Winebid or consignment to a broker/retailer is the only way to go. As I mentioned, I do not follow Winebid so I don’t have a perspective.
If consigning to an online retailer (and probably Winebid), then Wine-Searcher pricing will inform how the wines are priced and sell through. Perhaps you can do better than naked W-S low at random retailers with one or two bottles but there is typically a W-S consensus low and as a generalization it is hard to do much better than that - unless the retailer has a customer base that it can place the wines with that doesn’t necessarily look on W-S and just responds to emails. There are some of those…always see higher than low market pricing coming out of HDH and Vinfolio and they seem to sell their inventory - not sure how or to whom or whether they can move a whole collection at high enough to make up for their higher commissions. If something is very collectible and somewhat rare then there could be a decent chance of moving it higher than low W-S but if it is a wine that has plenty of stock in the market and shows up in every other retailer email and on W-S at 25 places, then at least in my opinion I think it is a harder bet to assume it will sell within 6-9 months at premium prices enough to make up for a higher commission.
Then there are others like BP, Benchmark and Flickinger with lower commission structures then HDH and Vinfolio that try to price sharply in order to sell through reasonably quickly and they assume their customers shop around and know the market pricing. I don’t have a relative sense on whether one of them will do better for you than another. I happen to have chosen Flickinger because I know the guys that run it (Pete and Tom are first rates guys and know what they are doing) and because delivering my wine to them means moving it literally 50 feet within the same building. I can say they have been great over the 7+ years that I have been buying and selling with them and so I would recommend that you at least see what they have to say.
The other question to consider is whether you have a segment of the wines that you want to sell which are not collectibles and merely solid drinking wines in the under $100 price range. Those often take much longer to sell and often take discounting. Hard to pay a higher commission structure on those unless the overall net makes sense along with the stronger wines. I would guess that those would do better with Flickinger (or Benchmark, BP etc) than an HDH or Vinfolio type place and so that is a balancing factor if applicable to what you are going to sell.
For instance, I am currently going through my collection in order to cull extras and things that I just don’t think that I will get to drinking. So far have pulled almost 700 bottles, probably on my way to 1000 or 1200 bottles. The average is over $100 per bottle and plenty are over $200 or even $300 but quite a few are $40 or $75 drinking wines, good wines with good scores but not collectibles, and so part of what I am thinking through is how to maximize the net on the whole thing. Auction won’t work because very little consists of 6 or 12 bottle increments and so looking for broker/retailer. Do I separate out the top 200 or 300 bottles which are highly collectible and view them separately or just make it easier and consign the whole thing together? Haven’t decided exactly, but for the entirety and to get the ordinary wines and “commodity” collectibles sold at decent pricing, I would be unlikely to consider anyone other than Flickinger.
Good perspective to learn about. Always curious to find out whether a higher net can be realized notwithstanding higher commission rates. From your post above it sounds like you are basing the net on 99% sold so actual results rather than estimates and so a very helpful example. Were the results pretty close overall (say within 2-3%) or was there a bigger spread on the net vs what the net would have been through others based on original estimates?
Also, as a relative perspective, were the wines that you consigned all or mostly very high end collectibles (SQNs, Marcassin, Screaming Eagle, 1st growth, Unico, Giacosa Riserva types) or were some more commodity type wines (for instance $75-150 Bordeaux or general high end (typical $100-150 Napa cabs) or $50-100 drinking wines without the draw of rarity)?
Was a good amount of higher end burgundy, a few high end Cali cabs and some obscurities (like chave vin de paille).
Sent them about 60 bottles in total for about a 26k estimate.
Everything sold within 6 months (with the exception 3 bottles listed at $120 each). As a result I realized about a 20k net.
I showed roughly the same portfolio to benchmark and was quoted between 16-17k for up front money with no 90 day option by comparison.
Flickinger was going to net out about 5-10% lower than what I eventually realized from HDH.
For me, the potential of waiting to get the money was worth the 20+% upsize between the quotes.
Thanks for the details - very helpful! Looks like a 23% commission which is lower by a handful of points than I thought HDH was.
I definitely agree on not taking the upfront money at that level of discount but always good to know that type of offer is out there.
Since you were at the very high end at an average of almost $450 per bottle, the results with HDH don’t necessarily surprise me since very high end Burgs (maybe you had DRC, Roumier and the like) can be sold at premiums to online listings…
Perhaps I am wrong in my thinking, but I think there is a high (or at least material) degree of likelihood that the 5-10% spread between net at HDH and net at Flickinger wouldn’t materialize for a collection averaging $200 and under rather than at over $400. Food for thought nonetheless.
I had outstanding service selling through Flickinger and the ease of getting the wine to their warehouse was also a factor.
I’m happy to recommend HDH. I consigned 66 bottles to them last December. 80% of the wine sold in the first 3 months. 3 bottles did not sell, and I picked them up last week. I too thought their appraisal was a little on the high side, but I can’t argue with their results. They were a pleasure to do business with.
I’m still a little confused after reading the whole thread. It seems Kevin may be asking an “apples and oranges” question. Winebid is primarily an auction site (with a little buy-it-now) while HDH does both auction and retail.
Kevin are the commissions you’re comparing between HDH auction and Winebid auction, or HDH retail and Winebid auction? The latter would be apples and oranges. As noted earlier, if you’re looking at HDH retail, then you should instead look at Flickinger retail or the others you’ve mentioned.
On the other hand, if you’re considering HDH auction and Winebid auction, then you could lump in the other auction houses noted along with The Chicago Wine Company. I sold with TCWC a number of years ago and the seller commission was quite high, which makes up for the fact that they charge no buyer premium. I don’t recall if that translated into a higher overall bid amount, but as an auction buyer, I always moderate my bids because of the buyer’s premium I’m going to get dinged.
John,
I really don’t view it as apples to oranges between HDH retail and winebid auctions. While their approaches are a little different, they have a pretty similar result. With HDH they set a retail price and if it doesn’t sell for a while then you consider lowering the price. With winebid, they set a reserve amount (which is effectively a retail price) and if it doesn’t sell for a while, they lower the reserve amount. Of course there is the potential with winebid that you could get more than the reserve, but it seems like everyone is setting their reserves at or above market prices so it really isn’t a true auction with little or no reserve. The other difference is the commission structure but, as you mentioned, since any rationale buyer is going to factor the buyer’s commission into their bidding with winebid, the Seller is essentially paying both buyer’s and seller’s commission, so if you compare the Seller’s commission with HDH to the collective commission with winebid, I really see it as an apples to apples comparison.
Fair enough Kevin. At the end of the day, you want to sell the bottles for the highest price and pay the least amount of commission on it. Nothing wrong with that!
Let me give you my perspective from the position of a buyer, as maybe it’ll help your decision. When I see wines on a retailer’s page that I happen to notice has been in inventory for a while, I really don’t think anything of it. I chalk it up to the right buyer not having seen the listing yet. But when I see the same wine appear week after week in a regularly held auction (Winebid, TCWC, etc.), I immediately think that the price is too high and I wait for it to come down. I don’t know if others look at auction bottles that way, but I suspect I’m not the only one. With that said, you may be better off going the retail route and stay away from auction listings. Just sayin’…
Kevin, I send a consignment to Winebid once a year and find a significant number of my lots sell for a few increments about the starting bid. I’ve had few bottles sell for as much as 2 or 3 times the starting bid. All I’m counting on is the appraisal, but I usually see some upside. I’ve only had to drop the reserve a handful of times, and more often then not, it ends up selling for as much or more then the original starting price.
I had a great experience with Heritage.
The logistics of the pickup were a little tricky but there was no cost to me.
No seller’s commission.
Every bottle sold, most within a month, last after six months.
I worked with Poppy, I hope their service won’t miss a beat without her.
Spectrum will adjust the seller commission depending on size of consignment. I’ve done as low as 6%. They are pretty easy to work with and have a large outreach. I have sent stuff to Winebid before and had a pretty smooth transaction as well but haven’t used HDH
Didn’t Spectrum try to sell fake stuff before they got called out on it? Their cut might be smaller but the buying base will probably be too.
I’ve sold through HDH before. Easy to work with (I’ve been a very happy customer since I started buying wine), but they take a big cut.
Not sure about fake stuff. I can’t comment on that part, but my consignments to them have all sold pretty quickly and for solid hammer prices.