Cents Per Point: How to Tell If an Auction Is Actually a Good Deal
The single most important question before you bid on any points auction: is this actually a good use of my points?
It is easy to get caught up in the experience itself (VIP access, exclusive events, stuff you cannot buy normally). But your points have value whether you spend them on an auction or a standard redemption, and it pays to know what you are giving up.
The basic formula
Cents per point (cpp) = (cash value of the experience / points spent) x 100
Say you win a concert VIP package worth roughly $500 for 25,000 points. That works out to ($500 / 25,000) x 100 = 2.0 cpp.
The tricky part is figuring out the cash value. For unique experiences that are not sold anywhere else, you have to estimate from similar events, ticket prices, and what is bundled in (hotel, meals, and the like).
What counts as "good" cpp?
This varies by program, but here are rough baselines for standard redemptions:
• United MileagePlus: ~1.2 to 1.5 cpp on economy flights, higher on business and first
• Delta SkyMiles: ~1.0 to 1.4 cpp on flights
• Marriott Bonvoy: ~0.7 to 0.9 cpp on hotel nights
• Hilton Honors: ~0.4 to 0.5 cpp on standard nights (Hilton has been devalued, so this is one of the lowest baselines here, which is exactly why a Hilton auction can clear the bar more easily than you would expect)
• Wyndham Rewards: ~0.7 to 1.1 cpp on hotel nights (flat-rate redemptions at pricey properties are where the high end shows up)
• Alaska Atmos Rewards (formerly Mileage Plan): ~1.5 to 2.0 cpp on partner flights, especially premium cabins (the old Mileage Plan miles converted one to one into Atmos points, so the math is unchanged)
These baselines are rough. They come from the points valuations that outlets like The Points Guy, Frequent Miler, and NerdWallet publish, and those numbers carry each outlet's own incentives and drift as programs devalue. Treat them as a range to sanity-check against, not a precise exchange rate.
If an auction gets you above your program's baseline, you are coming out ahead. If it lands below, you would get more value out of a normal flight or hotel booking.
When the math gets interesting
The best auction deals typically land in the 1.5 to 4-plus cpp range. These tend to be:
• Mid-tier experiences that do not attract heavy bidding, think a cooking class or minor-league VIP package, not the Super Bowl
• Experiences with high retail value relative to the bidding interest, resort packages where the cash equivalent is clear and high
• Buy It Now listings priced at a fixed rate that happens to be favorable
The worst value auctions are usually the high-profile ones. A Super Bowl package that goes for, say, 500,000 United miles might pencil out to around 0.4 cpp once you stack it against the business-class flights those same miles could book.
Don't forget opportunity cost
This is the part most people skip. Those 50,000 points you are about to bid? You could also use them for:
• A round-trip domestic flight worth $700 (1.4 cpp)
• Two hotel nights worth $400 (0.8 cpp)
• Transfer to a partner program for a premium cabin redemption
If the auction experience is worth 1.0 cpp and you could get 1.5 cpp on flights, you are effectively paying a 50% premium for the experience. That can be totally fine if it is something you genuinely want to do, but you should know you are making that trade.
The practical approach
1. Find the listing on PointAuctions.com and note the current bid or Buy It Now price
2. Estimate the cash value by searching for comparable tickets, packages, or events. For a reality check on the points side, the closed-auction archive shows what comparable lots have actually cleared at
3. Do the division: cash value / points = your cpp
4. Compare to your baseline: is this above or below what you would normally get from this program?
5. Factor in the intangible: some experiences are worth a cpp premium because they are genuinely unique or meaningful to you
There is no single right answer here. A diehard fan bidding on meet-and-greet tickets with their favorite artist might happily take 0.8 cpp because the experience is priceless to them. Someone casually browsing should probably hold out for 1.5 cpp or better.
The point of running the math is not to be rigid about it. It is to make sure you are deciding with eyes open instead of getting swept up in the auction excitement.
If you want this worked through on a specific program, I have done the math on the Capital One Entertainment 0.8 cpp trap and built an Accor ALL points arbitrage calculator. New to all of this? Start with how points auctions work. And if you want the real clearing prices behind every baseline here, see what 2,000 closed auctions reveal about each program.