What will I net selling my wine?

A £2,000 hammer pays you about £1,700, and Sotheby's settles within 45 days of the sale. Ask a saleroom what will I net selling my wine and you get an estimate range back, because the estimate is the only number a house will put in writing before you sign a consignment agreement. This page works the other direction: from the hammer down to the money in your account, line by line, with the published rate behind each one.

What does a seller actually receive?

Sotheby's publishes a standard seller's commission of 10% of the hammer price. UK commission is a service, and services are standard-rated at 20% VAT, according to GOV.UK. So a quote given plus VAT costs you another 2% of the hammer. Sotheby's also retains a success fee "equivalent to 2% of the hammer price for any lot with a hammer price that exceeds its high estimate". Add storage while the lot waits for a catalogue and a bonded transfer into the saleroom, and a £2,000 hammer settles at roughly £1,700 before insurance, photography and cataloguing, which no house cited here publishes a wine rate for. Sotheby's pays "within 45 days from the sale date, provided we are in receipt of the buyer's payment". Bonhams Skinner pays consignors 35 days after the auction. Counting from the other side of the room: a bidder paying £2,500 for that lot at Sotheby's, where wine carries a 24% buyer's premium plus a 1% overhead premium according to its buyer's premium chart, hands over about £800 that never reaches you.

What comes off the hammer, and in what order?

Seven things. Seller's commission, VAT on that commission, a success fee if the lot beats its high estimate, insurance while the wine is in someone else's custody, photography and cataloguing, storage across the sale cycle, and the movement into the saleroom's bond.

Only the first three are published anywhere, and only by some houses. Sotheby's own guide to consigning is candid about the rest: sales-related costs "may be borne by the auction house or consignor" and it lists them as "loss or damage liability (insurance), marketing, shipping, restoration, framing, storage, expertise and catalog illustration and reproduction rights". The same guide puts seller's commission across the market at "0% to 10% or more, depending on the auction house".

Bonhams Skinner says its commission is "determined by the type and value of items being sold, and is negotiable", that "there is a fee for insurance while your objects are at Bonhams Skinner", and that other fees "may include transport, handling, photography, and are negotiable". Zachys publishes its 25% buyer's premium and does not publish a seller rate at all.

The exception is iDealwine, which prints both sides: 15.6% including VAT (13% excluding) charged to the seller, against 25.8% including VAT (21.5% excluding) charged to the buyer. That single pair of numbers tells you more about auction economics than any estimate range will.

What does a £2,000 hammer actually pay out?

One twelve-bottle case, consigned in bond to a London wine sale, sold at £2,000. The hammer and the four-month hold are the assumptions. Every rate below is the published one named in its row.

Line	£	Where the rate comes from
Hammer	2,000.00	the number the room agrees
Seller's commission, 10% of hammer	−200.00	Sotheby's published standard rate
VAT on that commission, 20%	−40.00	GOV.UK standard rate, if your quote is plus VAT
Success fee, 2% of hammer	−40.00	Sotheby's, only if the hammer beats the high estimate
Bonded transfer into the saleroom	−18.00	£15 minimum transfer charge plus VAT, BordeauXchange
Storage, four months	−5.40	£13.50 per case per year plus VAT, BordeauXchange
Insurance	included above	full market value replacement, BordeauXchange
Photography and cataloguing	not published	Bonhams Skinner calls these negotiable
Net proceeds	1,696.60	84.8% of hammer

Inside its estimate, with no success fee, the same lot nets £1,736.60. And the buyer was invoiced £2,500 for the lot: Sotheby's charges 24% on all hammer prices for wine and spirits plus a 1% overhead premium, per its buyer's premium chart dated 13 February 2026. That chart states its rates exclude local taxes, so a UK buyer adds VAT on the premium on top of the £2,500. Even before that VAT, £803 of the £2,500 stayed inside the transaction, which is 32% of it. That wedge is the reason a wine can look expensive at auction and disappointing to sell in the same week. Our landed-cost calculator runs the buyer's half of that arithmetic.

Why does beating your estimate cost you money?

Because of the success fee. Sotheby's retains 2% of the hammer on any lot that exceeds its high estimate, so the outcome you were hoping for is the one that triggers an extra charge. On our £2,000 case that is £40.

This changes how you should read a low estimate. The reserve, per Sotheby's consigning guide, "isn't typically set above the low estimate", so a conservative estimate protects the house on the downside and pays it on the upside. Push for an estimate range you believe, not the flattering one, and ask whether the success fee is in your agreement at all. Some houses do not charge one.

What happens if the lot doesn't sell?

You can still be billed. Sotheby's publishes a "minimum $500 seller's commission applicable to any lot with a low estimate of $5,000 or less, whether sold or unsold". On a modest consignment that clause can cost more than the commission on a successful sale.

Withdrawal is the other trap. Sotheby's consigning guide confirms the seller's agreement carries clauses covering "withdrawals and associated fees", and the amount lives in that contract rather than on any public page. Get it quoted before you sign, in pounds, not as a percentage of something undefined.

iDealwine runs the opposite policy and says so publicly: if your wines find no buyer, "they are automatically entered into the next sale at no extra cost". Between those two positions there is real money, and it is the question almost nobody asks at consignment.

Which costs does no house publish for wine?

Insurance, photography and cataloguing. Of the houses cited on this page, every one charges some version of them and none prints a rate for wine.

There is a tell worth knowing. Sotheby's states that "except for Wine, Sotheby's Client Experience can arrange expert and insured shipping and convenient delivery of your property", and separately that "as the consignor, you are responsible for packing, shipping and insurance charges". Wine is carved out of the service and the cost sits with you. Ask for these three as a single capped figure in writing before the lot enters a catalogue.

What does storage cost while you wait?

Less than sellers fear, and it is the one line you can benchmark yourself. BordeauXchange publishes £13.50 per nine-litre case per year excluding VAT, including full market value replacement insurance. Berry Bros. & Rudd charges £17.28 per case per year at its UK standard rate, VAT included, and insures everything stored at replacement value.

Moving the case is charged separately. BordeauXchange lists bonded transfers at £0.50 per case with a £15 minimum, so a single case costs the minimum and twenty cases cost the same £15. If you are selling one case, consolidating it with the rest of the parcel is worth more than negotiating the commission by half a point.

How long before the money lands?

Five to nine weeks, and it is conditional. Sotheby's pays "within 45 days from the sale date, provided we are in receipt of the buyer's payment". Bonhams Skinner makes consignor payments 35 days after the auction. iDealwine pays within 35 days of the end of the sale. Zachys splits it: "we will pay you the initial proceeds collected at 35 days after the sale and the remaining at 65 days".

That is the settlement clock only. It starts at the sale, not at the day you consigned, and the consignment deadline that got your wine into that catalogue closed earlier still. Budget from the day the case leaves your storage account, not from the day the gavel falls. If you need cash inside a month, an auction is the wrong instrument whatever the wine would realise.

Do you owe tax on what you net?

Possibly not, and the rules are more generous than most sellers assume. HMRC's Capital Gains Manual at CG76901 states that "bottled wines and spirits are chattels (tangible moveable property) so disposals for £6,000 or less will be exempt under TCGA92/S262".

The catch is the set rule. HMRC says bottles disposed of to the same person "may form a set", turning on whether they are "similar and complementary", which "would require the wine in them to have been produced from the same vineyard in the same vintage year", and whether they are "of greater worth when sold collectively than when sold individually". A twelve-bottle case of one wine from one vintage sold as one lot is exactly the fact pattern HMRC describes, so the £6,000 test applies to the case, not the bottle.

Then there is the wasting-asset question, and here the manual is genuinely unclear. A wasting asset has "a predictable life not exceeding fifty years at the time when it was acquired", according to HMRC's Capital Gains Manual at CG76901. HMRC says the definition "would clearly apply to cheap table wine", that "it would certainly not apply to port and other fortified wines, and for everything in between that the basic consideration, in our view, is whether the wine has turned to vinegar or has merely matured". " Read literally that reverses the fifty year test it just set out. Treat the wasting-asset point as something to take advice on, not a rule to lean on. For a wine like Château d'Yquem, which routinely outlives fifty years in bottle, it is not a theoretical question.

This is not tax advice.

Auction, broker, or sell the case outright?

Compare net, never headline. Farr Vintners sells on broking at 10% commission, "so you receive 90% of the selling price", with a £20 minimum commission where the case value is under £200, and buys outright with immediate payment. That 90% is measured against a retail-facing asking price, while an auction's 85% is measured against a hammer struck below retail because the bidder is already paying a premium on top.

Which wins depends on how deep the bidding is for your specific wine. For something with a thick auction record like Pétrus, the room finds the price. For a wine that trades in ones and twos, a broker holding it for the right buyer beats a saleroom clearing it into a thin room. Check the depth before you choose the route: the fine wine market index shows what has actually been hammered, and how we label a price explains why an ask, a bid and a hammer are three different numbers.

Before you consign, get four numbers in writing

Commission and whether it is quoted plus VAT. The success fee, if there is one. The unsold and withdrawal charges in pounds. The capped total for insurance, photography and cataloguing. A house that will not put all four in an email is telling you something.

And when you are choosing what to sell rather than where, the useful view is net, not hammer. We publish net-of-fee price history on every wine we cover, so you can see what a case like Romanée-Conti has actually paid its sellers after the fee stack rather than what the headline said. Join the list and we will send it when your wines move.