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Buying & Selling

Buying & Selling systems changed during the pandemic………..but is still as simple as 1, 2, 3

1. BUYING – What’s Changed since the pandemic?

Pre -2020, our extremely busy & popular traditional auctions often had 200+ people in the room.  The pandemic caused us to change to online only auctions and we built a new website to accomodate this.
A new housing estate was built opposite the saleroom site during the pandemic period and it is no longer appropriate to fill South Hill Road with streams of parked cars on a sale day. After our landlord had been in a care home suffering with dementia, we were not in a position to improve the site accordingly. So we will be operating as a busy Online Auction House & House Clearance Warehouse in the meantime, with the intention of having a new larger building on this site in the future for the planned return to traditional sales.

Most of our entries are from house clearances – bringing ‘lots’ fresh to the market. Some are from private entries, but either way all the lots belong to the vendor clients. We operate in two ways, although the vast majority is sold via option 1 below.

1. AUCTION LOTS– mid-top range items will be offered as Auction Lots on our auction platform within this website, for payment and collection by appointment. All lots subject to 18% buyer commission no vat.

2. BUY NOW LOTS – .all general to mid range items will be offered on this website to ‘Buy Now’ by reservation with payment and collection by appointments. All lots subject to 18% buyer commission no vat.

We do not offer a postal service, but client arrange couriers can be catered for.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CLICK BELOW:
BUYER’S GUIDE & FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

see also our T&Cs or Contact Us

3. SELLING – Accepting Entries

All lots forward for auction remain the property of the vendor clients.

We are accepting entries of lots by pre-booked appointment only. There are no set opening hours for dropping off of goods. We fill up very quickly and there may be times when there is a waiting list for items to be sold.  Your items will be photographed and go through a condition report ready for the next available auction catalogue. We do not charge any lotting fees or unsold lot fees.   We may ask for images or your expectations before giving an appointment, this is simply so we clarify if the item/s are suitable and the your required price is achievable.

The saleroom has a network of professional man & vans/removal firms who will quote and charge you direct for transporting items to the saleroom.
The saleroom does not offer a free collection service.
If you use your own transport/man & van, then that is fine by appointment, but we do not take responsibility for return journey expenses if items are turned away as not being of suitable type or condition for auction.

We will talk you through the current operating system, valuations and reserves. But please note that we not accept reserves on any items under £50. We will also turn away items with reserves above the bottom end of the auctioneers valuation at that time.  So if the auctioneer puts an estimate of £100-150 then the reserve cannot be above £100. High reserves also put off the buyer. We appreciate that margins are very tight on gold and silver, items where the vendor wishes a price above bottom of estimate, the auctioneer may be prepared to offer it as Buy Nows should the auction option not be suitable.

For furniture entries it is recommended that you either speak to a member of the team or email pictures prior to loading and hauling items to the saleroom, as depending on type, we may turn some items away. Furniture is often falling into the brackets of ‘highly saleable’ or ‘not saleable at all’ with very little middle ground. So please check before, so you don’t waste your time loading or paying someone to bring it in.

All vendor’s must agree to having read and understood our T&Cs, which we will talk you through.

Settlement of vendors accounts, by method and timing will be discussed and agreed with each vendor, as some lots may sell quicker than others, depending on whether Buy Now or Auction lots.

 

House clearance accounts will normally be settled once all lots are sold with waste & labour charged and payable directly to the sub-contractor or waste centre. We do not automatically give reports in between sales, as we try to concentrate all of our efforts on photographing, researching and marketing your items and on the buyers who create the great results, in order to get the funds in as quickly as possible for the vendors and to keep our administration workload low in order to keep our commission low for you.

All vendors’ lots are subject to our low 18% commission no vat. Electrical testing fees are charged, cutting off plugs or cables will not save you money as we will reject them (other than in the instance of exceptional items with obsolete cabling worth removing and selling for re-wiring purposes)

All items must comply with current laws & regulations.

Please read through our  Terms & Conditions, which will also guide you as to what items we do not accept for auction or contact a member of staff.

Our new Rag & Bone Recycling Bay offers a lot of disability aids (non NHS supplied) and items that we have saved from our clients’ house clearances from potentially becoming waste. Donations can be made for these type of items via the charity box in the office. We accept kind private donations of  higher quality items to be sold for a charity, providing payments are via bank transfer to the charity directly. Thank you, but we do not accept donations of low end items as our clearances create enough volume of this as it is!
To see our recycling and waste policies and for more information see our News & our T&Cs.

Aug-Sept 2020 we raised £369 for the Callington Memory Cafe via donations, and a further £120 during the later lock-downs, supporting the local community whilst going a little way to helping save the planet!