Alt Auctions - playing fair?

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Hey everyone! This is David and i work for Alt auctions as their TCG specialist so if you have any questions or concerns about our auctions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I see some of you guys also follow me on IG so i’m only a message away if you have any questions. I rarely go on elite forum but i didn’t know there were any questions about Alt, so feel free to message me here or on IG :slight_smile:

Also to @pfm – the bidding experience for Alt is identical to Fanatics Premiere auction so it’s not a new bidding system. This way helps seller maximize their items’ exposure.

i’ve noticed a good amount of negativity about Alt and i am surprised to see that and i don’t seem to understand why – It’s ok to be constructive but to be negative for being a new contender in this indusry is not a fair take imo. Like I said, i’m here to answer any qustions if you have any regarding Alt. Thanks everybody!

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I haven’t used Alt myself, but I think people are tired of the boomer premium and extended bidding. Compared to ebay, auction houses seem so outdated and think buyers are dumb for not considering the buyers premium, or that you think sellers are dumb for thinking “but the buyer is paying the fee”

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Hello David, what is Alt doing to mitigate shill bidding within its marketplace?

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Yeah i hate buyer’s premium too but Alt’s not the only one with BP – Heritage has 25% BP lol, Goldin has 22%, and fanatics has 20% BP. Only eBay doesn’t have BP.

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Hey there – we have our customer support team that’s vetting the bidders along with my input as well whether the bidders are legit or not, but most of the verification is done by the support team. We also require our new users to put payment on file when bidding on our auctions.

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Is there a reason why individual items cant end with there own extended bidding?

I get having them extend but having to have every card not get any bids before letting it close seems crazy to me.

I spent 2ish hours before giving up and going to sleep where the card I wanted wasn’t getting bid up just others keeping it open.

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I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. The three major pain points I hear when talking to people about alt are:

  1. Why does alt require my social security number as a buyer?
  2. I don’t like premier block style extended bidding.
  3. I don’t like paying a buyer’s premium.

If you’d like to grow your business or get better PR I think addressing any of those pain points would help.

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This is a fair point considering I enjoy that fanatics does that for their weekly auctions. As I said earlier, our auction system is identical to fanatics Primere auction so any bids on any items will refresh the entire dang auction. I do hope that our tech can be at that level throughout this year for better bidding experience. But for the time being, i don’t see that changing any time soon. My advice for the time being is to have a rough idea that Alt auctions end around 8pm PST THURSDAY, and I would throw in my last minute bids then. It would be LESS painful lol

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#1. we can def rectify. no need to put your social security, Alt can approve your account without it, so just DM me or email support@alt.xyz to verify your account. I don’t know why we have that feature but it should be gone soon.

#2. Hopefully this can improve as Alt gains more traction where the system can be improved towards the buyers

#3. This i can’t do anything about loll Buyer’s Premium is unfortunately here to stay but regarding #1, that can be fixed currently. #2, this will improve with more time.

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That’s cool, fixing the first two would make me more interested in alt auctions

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Yeah #1 is basically rectified for y’all. Just hit me up or email support@alt.xyz. Regarding #2, it will take sometime to switch up the entire bidding experience; however, we still have amazing TCG inventory ending every Thursday that I highly consider you guys to check it out :slight_smile:

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My goal is not to be negative, it’s to be honest. How long alt has been around is irrelevant to my experience.

I stand by this. The bidding system is the same as Fanatics Premiere but the experience is not. The key difference is the $10k limit, which means effectively it costs $10k+ for a single user to extend the block on Fanatics. It also means there are less items (ie. 125 items this month in Fanatics Premiere vs 1158 items in the Alt block next week). The overall consequence is that the bid velocity is way lower on Fanatics and items reach their saturation price sooner.

Put another way, it means that a bid on this item extends the entire block on Alt:

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Whereas the cheapest item on Fanatics Premiere now is this:

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The result is that the Alt auctions go on for 3 hours where theoretically it could end any second so you have to pay attention, but realistically it’s not going to end until the 10 second countdown. And it ends not because all items reach a saturation point in price but rather stochastically when - by chance - a random 10 second interval occurs where there are just no bids. So in the end the bidding experience is to wait around for 3 hours watching the items “just in case” and hope that you have the top bid when the auctions randomly end.

The app also becomes borderline unusable for me toward the end of the auction due to the lag.

This is just me voicing my experience, none of this is personal. As it stands today, I’d probably rather spend 10-20% more per item somewhere else if it means I don’t have to bid on the Alt platform. Hopefully you find this constructive. On a hopeful note, it’s all fixable. I’d be happy to use the platform if it improves on these issues.

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eBay is starting to introduce a kind of stealth buyers premium for when you buy from private sellers (not for all countries yet, and I think this may only apply in a country where there are no sellers fees). As a general rule, since the 1970’s or so fees to buyers/sellers have only escalated in auctions. Sothebys recently announced a reduction in selling fees, but they have now backtracked on this.

My issue with bidding on Alt was some of the shill bidding/non paying bidders on the prototypes, but I managed to avoid winning any of the auctions so I was not affected. Shill bidding/non paying bidders is also an issue in certain areas of antiques. I have bid on some of your further auctions and I am personally satisfied with the steps you have taken to mitigate this (having payment option linked).

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Thanks for your feedback – Fanatics Primere def has the high end focus thus their priemere themed auction.

Regarding extended bids my best advice is to bid during the last 10 seconds intervals because it doesn’t end randomly when there are bids taken place. All cards are created equal, Scott. Don’t hate on CGC 9 Dunskull lol. All jokes aside, I do appreciate you for genuinely trying out the platform and it seems you also have a firm understanding of the app as a whole as i saw you answering Alt questions to others regarding our vault system.

In general, I saw some negative posts from you @pfm and although you are entitlted to your opinions, you could have told me all these things where it will become constructive. Maybe i’m leveraging and overvaluing our relationships too much but the point is i’m accesssble.

Most of your complaints are extremely buyer-centric. You have to consider the seller’s POV as well that they are not trying to get sniped all the time.

I 100% agree Alt dropped the ball on Beta Prototypes with re-listing; however, we are making initiatives and necessary fixtues as we speak for every upcoming auctions. Not trying to make excuses, but i can only input so much change when there are leaderships involved aka i’m only a sales rep.

As an alt employee, I tell people to use fanatics or eBay when i know certain cards do far better on there than on Alt like Pokemon autos for example or high end yu-gi-oh. Currrently, Alt offers best cash advance compared to our competitors – that is one of our best value propositions. So i’m not here to disagree with your takes as I buy on fanatics, ebay, heritage, and even rare candy. Every platform has their pros and cons or more positive note, every platform has their specialties.

There are certain complaints that I can’t fix:

  1. Buyer’s premium that is something that we as a community just have to accept lol. It is here to stay with most auction platforms.
  2. Extended bidding experience/style – I agree that fanatics weekly auctions does the best when it comes to bidding item to item basis but we are focused on the seller’s maximum gains so this is unfortunately going to stay as well. I agree that this is not the best bidding experience for us buyers because it tires us out waiting all three hours. That’s why i give the advice of focusing your bids around 8pm PST – you have about 10- 20 mins left to make your last minute biddings if you want to go that route.

Other than that, I appreciate your guys’ communication about Alt. First and foremost, I will definitely promise you that we will be on top of the shill bidding of the prototypes so you guys can bid with ease and know that it WON’T be re-listed in the future. Hopefully with my involvement and commuication to e4 and our community as a whole, you guys can give Alt a try. If there’s anyting that bothers you or would like to provide constructive feedback, you can reach out to me here or on IG.

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If the buyers aren’t having a good experience, there wont be any buyers, which means no sellers, which means no business

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Yes that is true but it has to be a well-balanced situation. If buyers are happy getting deals and steals, then we would have no sellers wanting to consign with us.

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I agree with statements made about the alt experience.

Buyers premium is ridiculous. Just because all the other auction houses are doing it doesn’t make it right. If ALT wants to stand out against the others, make the change that people want to see.

The premier extended bidding style needs to go and is the main reason why I avoid alt.

Thanks for posting on here and being open to feedback. Unfortunately to me ALT just feels like another auction house that has some cool cards pop up, but is still the lame outdated experience.

It’s 2025, make TCG auctions feel like it.

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Yea, I agree that a reduced or eliminated buyer premium would make Alt stand out among the competition. JP auctions houses and ebay don’t charge BP so it’s not impossible to run a business without it.

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I absolutely hate the mindset that buyer’s premium puts in the seller’s heads. They get 105% of “hammer” but the word hammer means nothing. The buyer reduced their bid by 20% to make their final “overall” bid.

If 1 auction house would do it like ebay, they might have a chance of standing out.

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easy solution is to decrease ur max bid by 20% on every relist :rofl: