Upcoming Bonham's Auction Question/Comment

[cluckdaddy76]

I am curious if anyone knows why Bonham's often makes such large groups for their fittings. For example, in an upcoming auction there are seventeen kozuka in one group. Many tsuba are in groups of three or more. My thought is this, wouldn't they actually make more money selling each one individually? I feel it keeps many people away from auctions like this unless your pockets are overflowing. I know as a collector I only like certain pieces and having to buy the sixteen other kozuka's just to get the one you really want is not feasible for the majority of people. Just curious if anyone else thinks along this line or if someone has the answer as to why they do make such large groups. 

[Brian]

Because for them, stuff at this price point is peanuts. They don't care when paintings and other items fetch millions. This is probably just nuisance stuff to them.

[DoTanuki yokai]

They only want customers with overflowing pockets to buy some old dinosaur bones for millions that no museum in the world wanted to pay 50k for. 
I think we can be happy that our art field is so undervalued. 

[Gakusee]

The reason is that they have business limits (in particular bottom thresholds) which they must meet if they are to register certain items and also to run certain auctions. So, often they tend to group items to meet these internal thresholds. Also there are thresholds which apply to the overall value / expectation for the auction as a whole (and there is a minimum there too). 
Finally, they make a judgement on what is a more desirable item and what is a less desirable item. If these two belong to the same collector, they might recommend to the seller to group the least desirable items with 1-2 more attractive items so that they are not left with unsold stock, relying on exactly what the original poster is complaining about - having to buy the whole lot. 

[cluckdaddy76]

Thanks for all the replies, they all make sense. I should have realized that selling a single $1,000 tsuba is nothing to a big auction house these days. Luckily, I did not see any chicken themed fittings so I will not even have to think about buying two or three extra one's that  I would need to sell in order to just get the one I want. I am not sure if anyone has looked at what they have coming up, but to me some of the guards even though they are quality work, are not appealing to me as a collector.

[Matsunoki]

Can’t understand why any vendor would agree to having their “collection” sold in this was by a big name auctioneer.

They would be far better off to select a good lower tier auctioneer who would sell each piece individually. They could negotiate a better vendors commission and even do the descriptions themselves if they wanted to. 
With just about everything listed on the internet nowadays they would receive the same level of exposure and probably a hell of a lot more enthusiasm. …imo

[PKDA]

Based on the items in the auction, it seems to be either a compilation of a few high end collections, or the collection of someone with substantial investment in Japanese art .

Either way the assessment of it being small change for Bonhams rings true.  That attitude might also be evident in that they have posted a single image of each lot. 

They provide detailed verbal descriptions of the individual pieces, yet just one image.

It shows that they are very confident in the listings.  Also not a lot of "low level" pieces in any of these groups.  At least from my beginners viewpoint.