I attend many of the Auctions at Rock Island and personally know a few of their appraisers, which I feel know what they are looking at. Yes you do have many Dealers who buy but also allot of individuals. They have a high % of items that go allot higher then I would expect I could sell items for or I would be willing to pay. But that being said it takes two to make an auction work for a seller, one to make a happy buyer. You always stand a risk. If you ask for a reserve they are going to try to keep it low so the item sells and they get their cut.

"A little more than a year ago I contacted Rock Island about the custom Sharps I was trying to sell."

I think that RIA may do a better job with antique and collectable arms than modern arms and especially modern custom or customized arms unless they have been done by well known and highly regarded gunsmiths.    ALL appraisal is based on having a reliable data base of comparable items with recent sales data to make a valid estimate.  A lack of comparable data makes it very hard to set a value and in that case appraisers tend to keep the value conservative. (Unlike the "appraisers" on 
Antiques Road show with their "insurance values").

Frank, 20% is not bad when you consider that going with an online auction will mean dealing with FFL's, packing and shipping, all of which eats up time and dollars...plus the emotional baggage associated with it.   

David

Boy you hit the nail on the head about selling them off before your gone. I see all types of rifles that have been left in a cellar or basement turn into crap as the folks that inherited really did not want it so into the damp they went. I saw at least 50,000 worth of rifles that were turned into 100.00 worth of scrap iron, termites got the wood and wet rot too.
Then the other thing we had happen in my own family was that we trusted the wife of my cousin to give us first chance to purchase at fair market value what we wanted, this was a large collection of over 500 rifle and really nice stuff like 2 Colt Walkers cased. In this same group were rifles that had belonged to me and his brother and they all went to auction. We did not even know about the auction until way after the fact, I think it was 6-8 months later that we had cleaned out. 2 of my favorites wee there that he was HOLDING for me. My other cousin his brother lost about 20 rifles and several pistols of which several were cased. Now the witch is after the last 40 acres of the family ranch, hope she likes rattlesnakes as we got a bunch.
What I'm getting at here is do not trust your relatives to be honest in handling your estate, cousins wife had a snake oil salesman lawyer who she worked for, imagine that.
As for auction companies I think Amoskeag is the most honest, and I would not put the bad ones here but lets just say some are not very honest it the descriptions at all.
Mike

"The house took 4 months to sell and yielded about 90% of the asking price.  Along the way the agent brought me a very low ball offer, the kind you dismiss in 10 seconds.  Her incentive was different than mine, a sale, any sale, got her paid and the lower amount didn't matter that much to her.  She supposedly works for me, but she really just wanted to move the house, not get me the best price."

Her motivation is more likely that as your agent she is obligated to forward all offers to you, she cannot accept or  reject offers.  That's the owner's right and responsibility.

The bottom line is salesmen are salesmen whether they are selling manure or shoveling it. Never think they are on your side. They are after money and I doubt that most of the people of RIA know much about single shots except they are a way to make money.