Say No to Catalogs

Okay, out with the information: It is time to say "no" to catalogs.

They are huge, completely wasteful, and add cost to the auctions that makes us all wind up getting stuck with a higher buyer's premium.

It takes a huge amount of time to make a catalog. You've got to arrange and design it, pay people to publish it, ship it.

Who pays for all that? Not the auction houses. We do!

Most collectors get these things, flip through them for ten minutes, and never look at them again. Without catalogs, we'd have BP's of under 15%.

It's the 21st Century fellas!

But no auction house can stop producing catalogs on their own, or they'd be accused by their competitors of "not doing everything they can to sell the card".

That's why we need a massive uprising against catalogs!

Save money in your pocket and time for the auction houses. The recycling bin is full enough as it is. No more catalogs.

agreed completely! big waste of money and and paper and space i never look at them anyway, and some people even request past catalogs .

i hear people say they like browsing the hardcopy because they might miss smth from the online auction? that sounds like nonsense to me but whatev. auction houses should spend money archiving past paper 'logs online and do away with future ones. go green!

I agree except for the REA auction, but I think that could be eliminated if the auction listing were better organized. REA huge volume almost makes it a necessity because you really need time to sort through the whole auction and doing it online (IMO) gets very boring. To me the Goodwin auctions are a prime example of catalogues that could be eliminated, good sized but able to see it all online in a reasonable time.

The only thing I could see for an auction house to keep doing catalogs would be for big spenders that do not go online. We all know there are big times collectors that we do not know of online and that may be there connection.

Lee

Lee pretty much hit it on the head. Most auctions you don't need a catalogue because it doesn't take that much time to check out an auction on-line. The exception being REA. The auction is so massive that it does get boring looking at a screen to see everything. The item that I am looking to get in REA is an item I never would have noticed if it wasn't for the catalgoue. The "dinosaur" fact is also there in that there are still some longtime collectors who do not go on-line for their collecting needs.

We are probably 10-15 years away from a time where catalgues will disappear.

cccc wrote:

i hear people say they like browsing the hardcopy because they might miss smth from the online auction? that sounds like nonsense to me

agreed 100%, but too many old school collectors like the catalogs too much so AH's won't risk getting rid of them. I would love to see them gone too if it meant lower BP's.

I agree with most of what has been. I dislike rea's catalog the most because it is so difficult to handle...and i no longer save them...a big waste of $$$ and trees!

The reason the auction houses still produce catalogs is because a lot of their customers (not only just the big spenders) go thru them while they are on their business trips, vacation, etc,... (train rides, airplanes, etc,...)

Huggins & Scott have given a discount for customers who do NOT want the catalog. I'm not sure if others are doing the same.

How kind of Huggins and Scott...after bidding on their on auctions for the last god knows how many years?!?!?!

I have always been amazed at what they send you for "free".I would rather save the money on the BP as well.