Originally Posted by BobC
When Paul Fusco of Fusco Auctions was still with us, used to love going to his combined live/internet auctions in person. People would pre-bid online, and then the live bidding would start at a designated time, just like extended bidding. Paul would then go through, lot by lot, and sell each lot live and in order. His wife, Debbie, sat next to him on his right-hand side and monitored the computer and online bids as they came in, calling them out alongside bids coming from people in the audience. He told me one time he was on 5 different online auction sites all at the same time, and that even people in China could be bidding live against you in attendance.
Paul was very quick and dedicated, and when on a roll could get through 75-100+ lots per hour. Still, you could easily be there a good 4-5-6 hours waiting for the lot(s) you were interested in to come up, and for the auction to finally end. He always used to bring in pizza/sandwiches and pop partway through the auction for those in attendance. One of the nicer things of attending his auctions live was you could come early and have a chance to personally see and examine everything in the auction. Also, as each auction lot closed, his staff would bring you the auction item(s) you had won. He also always had another staffer or two then handling a checkout/cashier's office where you could pay for everything whenever you were ready to go. You didn't have to wait till the entire auction was over to pay and be on your way. They constantly updated people's winning bids in the cashier's office. Also, by being in attendance and paying by cash/check, there was no surcharge the online winners usually got tagged with for paying by credit card. And if you did stay to the end, you were usually rewarded with several late auction entries that were not available to online bidders, only those in attendance. These late, live auction only lots, also generally included what Paul called "balance of one man's collection" lots, which would sometimes literally cover entire tables, or be stuffed into single or multiple boxes. Never knew what you would find, but had fun just looking through them. It was the stuff Paul said he couldn't usually see selling as individu.al items or in small lots, or that he didn't want to have to pack up and pay to have shipped to some online buyer. Aaahhh, those were the days.
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