Is selling by auction a risky business.

[rat rod]

Been approached by Historics Classic & Sports Cars to sell one of my cars, After the demise of Coys Auction leaving

all the venders unpaid for their cars and not wishing to tar the other auction houses with the same brush but it

did make me stop and think . If your car sells , from the duration of the sale to when you get paid ,some a month

others 14 days and that's only if the auction get paid on the day ,if the payment to the auction is delayed by the buyer your payment will be

delayed accordingly as well ,meanwhile you have no car or money. The auction house is your new bank, you hope only for for a short while.

There was a thread about the collapse of Coys on here with out of pocket venders having their say,likewise there was one or two

unsympathetic replies saying if you were entrusting your expensive pride and joy with basicly complete strangers surely you

would do a check on Company House first at the very least ,in Coys case it would have been obvious to the trained eye they

were in no fit state.

With that in mind i did have a look into the said auction house affairs before i commit myself to them but not being a corporate sort of person

i couldn't make head nor tail of Companies House details and went totally over my head,

Has anyone had experience of this classic auction house good or bad and would be grateful for any advise given .

[Bob_The_Builder]

Similar problems with SOR. At least with an auction house it's their core business model so you are unlikely to be propping up the other parts of the business.
If you are really concerned the only way to do it is sell yourself.

[Bispal]

Old Coy's were awful, I can't speak for any new management but it took me 4 months to get my money out of the old company and it came in dribs and drabs. I would never use an auction house again it was mega stressful especially when Collecting Cars, Patina 'the market' and car and classic auctions exist, what's the point of all that risk.

[Cheib]

Depending on the car I would look at Collecting Cars before a traditional auction house. With regards to Coys there was plenty of information about dubious business practices quite some time before they went bust…911 UK had a long running thread on them for example. So I would scour the internet before consigning a car (PH rules mean there won’t be anything on here…..). Although plenty of trade people got caught by Coys too….I remember seeing Hexagon’s name as one of the creditors.

[Trev450]

I can thoroughly recommend Collecting Cars based upon a recent experience. I sold one of my cars with them around 6 weeks ago and it couldn't have gone more smoothly. We agreed upon a reserve price (optional), they arranged for a professional photograper to come to the house who spent about 2 hours documenting the car, the auction went live about a week later and the car sold well above reserve without me even having to take it out of the garage. Once sold, CC put the buyer in touch with you and you to make arrangements for payment and collection. The only cost to me was £150 for the photographer and that was money well spent imo as the images were of an exceptional quality.

[petjam]

I can recommend historics.co.uk.

Bought from them twice and sold twice.

On the purchases the cars were as described and on the sales I had my funds within 2 weeks.

[grumbas]

Check the small print, I'm fairly certain Historics put auction proceeds into a ring-fenced account (in the same way solicitors do for instance) so funds are safe. Why it isn't standard practice for auction houses I've no idea, I certainly wouldn't sell anything of value through an auction house that didn't operate this model.

[rat rod]

Thanks for all the input guys, very interesting comments , gives me something to sleep on

I was contacted by Collecting Cars on two occasions on two different cars but couldn't seem to get together with them over the reserves,

not sure if it was them or me.I also offered them a personal plate to sell but they wanted for me to sell it with no reserve which i thought a

little dangerous, they did at the time have a large backlog so maybe they were in a position to be choosy,

The backlog seems to have gone down a little since then.

My mate sold his Aston to a buyer from Hong Kong through them so i know it can work well for the seller.

Yes Historics do have a Segregated trust account managed by Coutts & Co ,the Queens bank apparently,

Coys also stated on their web site that they had a similar sort of account so i don't know what happened there,

Maybe they were telling fibs,

Edited by rat rod on Saturday 6th November 00:13