Lotting and cataloging is the labor of turning a room full of stuff into numbered, described, photographed lots ready to sell. It is one of the largest hidden costs in running an auction, and it gets charged for in two different places: as crew labor the auction house eats, and as a per-lot rate when the work is outsourced or priced by software.
Crew labor rates
Start with crew labor. According to ZipRecruiter (2025), auction cataloger positions pay between $14 and $28 per hour depending on location and specialization. The gap between the wage and the loaded rate is overhead - a crew hour costs the house well more than the number on the timesheet.
Per-lot pricing makes the cost legible
According to Sound Auction Service in Washington state, their cataloging rate is $3 per lot for full lot preparation including photography, description, and upload. Gavelist's triangulation of published cataloging rates puts full-scope manual cataloging at roughly 8-15 lots per hour, about 4-7.5 minutes per lot - so the per-lot cost moves with how fast a cataloger works, not only with what they are paid. Two independent lineages, an outsourced service rate and a cost-per-lot formula, land on roughly the same $3 per lot.
| Cataloging cost | Rate |
|---|---|
| Auction cataloger wage (ZipRecruiter, 2025) | $14-$28/hr |
| Fully loaded crew hour (AIM) | $60/hr |
| Per-lot service rate (Sound Auction Service) | $3/lot |
| Per-lot cost formula (AIM) | ~$3/lot |
| Gavelist AI description pass | $0.15/lot, 0% of sales |
| Gavelist subscription tiers | $79/mo (1,000 lots), $160/mo (2,500), $250/mo (5,000) |
| Gavelist market comps + value estimate add-on | 15c/lot, separate line item |
How per-lot software changes the margin
The margin story is where per-lot software changes the calculation. At a manual cost near $3/lot, a 1,000-lot sale carries roughly $3,000 of cataloging labor before the first bid. Gavelist generates the descriptions at a flat $0.15/lot and takes 0% of sales, so the auctioneer keeps every dollar of hammer price and the cataloging line shrinks by an order of magnitude - which is what actually moves margin on a high-lot-count, lower-average-value sale. (A fuller breakdown lives in the real cost of manual auction cataloging.)
Two costs to keep separate
Gavelist's $0.15/lot covers the AI description pass. If you add market comps and value estimates, that is a distinct opt-in add-on at 15c/lot; a product photo is another 15c/lot. They are separate line items, not bundled into the description price. How tools price cataloging as a category - flat per-lot, subscription tiers, per-sale - is covered in how AI cataloging tools charge; this post is about the auctioneer's own cost and margin.
Frequently asked questions
How much do auctioneers charge to catalog a lot? According to ZipRecruiter (2025), auction cataloger wages run $14 to $28 per hour. Gavelist's AI description pass is $0.15 per lot with 0% of sales.
Is a lotting fee the same as commission? No. Lotting and cataloging is a labor cost for preparing lots; commission (seller's premium) is a percentage of hammer price. A per-lot cataloging tool does not take a cut of sales.
Does AI cataloging replace the crew? It replaces the description-writing and data-entry hours, not the physical sorting, staging, and high-value review. The savings come from the per-lot labor, which is the bulk of the cost on high-count sales.
Sources
- ZipRecruiter, "Auction Cataloging Jobs." ziprecruiter.com
- Sound Auction Service, "How It Works." soundauctionservice.com