I think in some areas there's room for a smaller, more local auction. Halls did it for years- maybe 20+? I forget when the first ones were.
That being said, they were live and added online, and had a TON of work to get each auction done while rounding up more stuff for the next auction.
The guys to listen to the most are the ones doing it or who have done it in the past. Like Barry Sloate. (Always nice stuff, unfortunately also too nice for my budget, but that's auctions for you. - I was also too disorganized to bid. )
A couple things were just brushed on, and you might not get much advice on them either because it's the stuff that really makes an auction, is finding stuff and a client list.
Getting new stuff is a long process. Lots of networking, lots of asking if someone was interested in selling some stuff. Maybe years of waiting. I was a Halls customer since 1977, and ran into the first collection that was both available to me and that I knew was more than I could handle in 2009. I finally consigned some stuff of my own in 2010. (Mostly extra stuff that I felt had to go to make room for my daughter. ) Yes, they took a pretty hefty consignment fee. But I trusted them enough to lot the carload of marginal stuff to maximize the return, and in the end the biggest disappointment was one card that want for about what I could get on Ebay. Other things went for a lot more than they'd bring on ebay and I did no work except to hand them boxes from storage and give them a brief description - Box of cards that used to book for something in 1990- that sort of stuff. (The other collection did very well and I got a nice little surprise bonus for recommending them) < Pay attention to that little bit! If someone basically hands you a 30-60K collection take care of them once you start getting profit from it.
On the sales end.
If getting eyes on stuff through here was all it took, then why bother doing it another way? No overhead of a website and platform, and the same end result. NOPE! One thin that's important is developing a client list. I'd be truly shocked if any of the active auction houses offered any help at all here. The client list is where the real money is. Sure, Ebay gets you seen by thousands, but not all of them are buyers, and not many are buyers with a decent budget. How many of your Ebay customers are repeat customers? When I was selling there the answer for me was "almost none".
The good auctions keep advertising the auctions to their list, Halls sent me an auction - flyer? list? I can't really call it a catalog - for a very long time, even through a several years long period of almost complete inactivity. Towards the end that was costing them a dollar in postage every month. (I felt guilty about not bidding all the time, but kids are expensive!) Plus the envelope, the list itself and their time.
The really big auctions will sometimes call a major client to give them a bit of advance notice on things they know the client really should buy. Followed by a sales pitch along the lines of "this really needs to be in your collection, it's coming 5 months from now. I've never gotten one of those calls, I'm not a big enough fish for that.
Bottom line, it's a ton of work, and you need a really big network and a lot of persistence.
If you do it, good luck!
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