Consignment vs Selling Direct: The Real Math
Consignment usually shows a higher number. Whether you keep more of it is a different question.
Consignment is pitched on the headline: a dealer will list your car for more than a buyer will pay you today. That is true. It is also incomplete, because the headline is gross and what matters is net — and the gap between them is wider than most sellers expect.
What consignment actually costs
- Commission. Typically seven to nine percent on an exotic. On a serious car that is a five-figure line item.
- Preparation. Detailing, paint correction and professional photography are often billed separately, and often required before listing.
- Time. Sixty to a hundred and forty days from listing to funds is a realistic range. Some cars go faster. Some sit far longer.
- Carrying cost during that window. Insurance continues. Depreciation continues. If it is stored, storage continues. Four months of holding an expensive car is not free.
- Price negotiation you do not control. The listed price is not the sold price. When an offer comes in below asking, the pressure to accept lands on you after you have already waited.
What a direct sale costs
A lower headline number, and that is the whole of it. No commission, no prep billing, no listing period, no negotiation cycle. The number you are offered is the number that reaches your account, and it reaches it inside a week.
Working an actual comparison
Take a car where consignment expects to achieve more than a direct offer. Subtract commission at eight percent. Subtract prep. Subtract four months of insurance and any storage. Then subtract the depreciation the car experienced while it sat, which on a modern exotic over a third of a year is not trivial.
For a lot of cars, the two outcomes land closer together than the headline suggests — and the direct sale delivered its number in five days with certainty instead of in four months with none.
When consignment genuinely wins
It is not always the wrong answer, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
- Rare or collector cars where the right buyer will pay well above trade and finding them takes reach you do not have.
- Cars with a story — provenance, competition history, notable ownership — that needs presenting rather than pricing.
- When you genuinely do not need the money or the space and are relaxed about a four-month window.
- Highly specified cars where the exact configuration is what someone is hunting for.
When direct is clearly better
- You want it resolved rather than listed.
- There is finance on it and payments continue while it sits.
- It is a volume model with many comparables, where a listing competes on price rather than uniqueness.
- It is stored, non-running, or part of an estate with a timeline.
- You have no appetite for hosting viewings.
The honest framing: consignment sells the possibility of more money later, a direct sale sells a definite amount now. Both are legitimate. Know which one you are buying.
See what a direct offer looks like
Send your VIN and get a written offer within the hour. No fees, no obligation.
Or call 877-420-9111 — a buyer answers seven days a week.