I just thought it might be interesting for anyone who has considered running an auction to have a breakdown of just how everything plays out financially with one of these. Obviously everyone's experiences may differ, auctions are cheaper to run earlier in the cycle (when the preorder bonuses are out), and shipping is a lot cheaper if you do this commercially like Matt Soto, Trent, or one of the other big names. This is strictly from the perspective of someone who isn't a major player late in the season.
The auction, with shipping to me, costs $8010. Including the money for the PYPs I kept (making me essentially one of the buyers as well) I raised 7509.46. I donated two of my own tokens worth $310 to juice the auction to get it over the finish line, so I basically put out $810.54 of my own money and tokens to execute the auction.
Shipping is basically a wash (unless something goes wrong). I collected $270, and total cost of shipping including materials and insurance for the more expensive packages was about $272. If something goes wrong though I'm on the hook for anything I didn't insure, because until the bidder gets their tokens in hand I'm responsible for it. I think this is the fourth auction I've run and in the previous 3 I didn't have any lost packages, so fingers crossed that stays true.
In exchange for my $810 I got a few things. I got an amulet of treasure finding, which is worth around $300. That's not a guarantee, it's luck of the draw. I got ten random URs, value of which shifts based on how lucky I get with the pull but let's say if I sold them all they'd probably be worth an average of $70, so $700 worth of tokens. I also got an extra old token mat because I'd mentioned in my auction thread that I really wanted one and Grunnel is a king amongst goblinoids. So, with my auction I netted value of about $190, without the AoTF I'd be down $110. I put in a ton of work to update the post, my spreadsheet, adjudicate disputes, sort, pack, and ship the tokens, probably around 20 hours. Thanks to the AoTF I basically earned a bit less than $10/hr in stuff for the auction. It was overall fun to run it, though a bit stressful at times and a bit of a pain at others. It also helps keep a game I really love continuing to run healthily, I know they really rely on token orders like this to keep things going.
TL;DR: Don't expect to make a fortune doing this, but at the same time you're not likely to be out anything if you do. You'll about break even when you factor in everything. Do it if you're going to enjoy it though, or if you just want to be more immersed in the True Dungeon community.
