Personal opinion is it’s too easy to say shit happens. AHs most important job is to make sure there is integrity in the process, mostly including the close. Before I say shit happens would like to know whether the AH had issues before and whether it took any actions to correct the problems with more capacity, etc.

Just suppose they had prior issues and did not take adequate corrective action. What are you going to do with that information?

1. Say it’s not a great house and they should do better either by investing more in infrastructure or doing smaller auctions or breaking up current auctions.

2. Still bid on things I want because they have the best or close to it.

But as others have mentioned, if ebay, Goldin or heaven forbid pwcc messed up an auction close there would be a lot less forgiveness/they made the best decision.

If auction houses lost money with one of these crashes it would never happen again.

Shit happens when it's sort of in your interest for the same shit to keep happening.

Reading the last 100 posts, overwhelmingly people are giddy with joy about the stuff they got. Wise man once said "stuff trumps everything."

And Peter said that, too. :)

LOL if the joke is what I think it is.

I'm usually pretty cynical but I really don't see the angle you're pursuing here.

No if, Goldin had repeat outages. I doubt anyone stopped bidding with them. I don't recall anyone thinking it was semi-intentional of them to keep not fixing it. I think people just thought they were incompetent/foolishly loyal to their then current provider.

BTW I think you're overlooking that the biggest concern of an AH is attracting consignments. No effing way is it in their interest to keep having crashes, probably nothing turns off consignors more than knowing or suspecting the AH's platform has problems. Consignors have LOTS of choices these days.

Peter, you’re one of if not the savviest collector out here but that seems crazy to me. If you’re a consigner, this is the AH you want. Hey, if we have any issues, don’t worry we’ll make a 21 day auction 22 days.

This is venturing on the absurd. Find me one consignor who prefers a dysfunctional AH even if their policy is to add a day in the event of a meltdown. And find me one AH that actually is happy when their system crashes or doesn't really try to fix it because it's a revenue booster.

When such technological problems first started occurring in some lesser auction houses here and there, it was bad news for them. But now over time it seems that eventually all the auction houses, especially some of the major ones, have ended up occasionally having a technology issue here and there (not every single one, but a lot of them). So, it ends up getting accepted and overlooked. Kind of along the same lines of what came out from your thread about the 3-year anniversary of the scandal. No one really likes it, but it also appears no one is specifically being punished for it either, and business just goes on as usual.

And not only does stuff trump everything, so does the money that pays for the stuff. REA still set some record prices, and how much more in bids did they bring in for some of their consignors because of the added day due to the tech glitch? These tech problems are not so new and isolated anymore that they end up having such a negative impact and stigma attached to the auction houses they happen to. At least I don't think so.

well - a mixed bag
 

My 24 mostly 19th century memorabilia and card consignments went up about 10,000. the second night primarily on 5/6 lots that continued to garner spirited bidding. Earlier there were strong prices on my early baseballs and partial sets. The Mantle lots I consigned went very high and I suppose I was quite giddy.
As a buyer my most wanted card was at 2000. at the original closing - about 15% below current values based on recent sales after the buyer's penalty and taxes. Despite my elation as a consignor I only bid on that one item going into the second night out of the 12 lots I had working bids on. It's one of two cards I need to complete a set I've been chasing over 25 years. For all that time I've managed to mostly hold the line. Not sure how it happened but I lost my sense of reason and I kept bidding until I "won" it at 3400. + juice - likely a record for that card in that grade.........

A few years back when REA has an outage on the auction ending night and they ended up waived all the shipping charges for that auction. Is it going to be the case this time given that extra night helped them to pocket millions more $. I am still waiting for an email for such announcement. :D

My invoice had normal shipping charges so looks like the answer to your question is no.

I don't think it's a given that the extra day of the auction resulted in so much additional bidding. Extended bidding usually sees plenty of action and the issues they had Sunday night prevented some number of people from being able to bid then. Just because a lot was bid up on Monday doesn't mean the same bidding wouldn't have happened on Sunday night during extended bidding if there hadn't been any problems.

While the extra day may have led to some people deciding to bid more, it is just as likely that others would have decided not to bid more because of what happened so the overall impact of the extra day could very well have been minimal or even negative.

Thanks guys, great cards by all. Ryan that Wagner pre-rookie is awesome, and love seeing all those rare back M101-4/5s and Lajoie, Aaron. Glad the card market continues to be healthy.


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If an auction is extended a day the house and many consignors make more money. Fact. Indisputable. And no one loses a penny. Sort of like a casino. In many ways.

I’m not saying anyone is doing this on purpose. I’m saying no one is losing any sleep over it. A nothing burger as we say now. The notion that this is some source of embarrassment is nuts.

And, yes, if I consigned the Wagner card (or any card worth huge bucks) I’d be THRILLED the auction was extended a day.

Speaking of which, I recently found some old REA catalogs?? Is there any interest here in something like that?

If an auction is extended a day for no good reason, then yes, the AH will likely make more money. However, when there is an issue that impacted (and likely prevented some) extended bidding, I don't think it's an indisputable fact that extending the auction a day will result in significantly different ending prices than if extended bidding was able to take place normally.

I'll willing to bet they got more bids overall the day after than they would have gotten naturally that night.

It's a meaningless bet because there's no way to know what would have happened had the site not had issues.

How is it an indisputable fact?

Read posts #170 and #214. Both seem to indicate that the extra day did foster additional bidding in some cases, and that is just from among the forum members that actively post on here. However, I would think the preponderance of REA bidders are not all active posters on here, and so the chance that even more instances of additional bidding on some other REA lots resulted from that added day are likely, I'm guessing, pretty darn high.

So, those two posts I referenced do seem to indicate that it is an indisputable fact that the one-day extension in this specific REA auction did lead to some additional bids. Now does that mean that such a bidding extension also resulted in additional bids in every other auction that has ever occurred where the bidding got extended for at least one additional day for whatever reason, no. But there is also no reasonable way to ever be able to prove or disprove that in every single instance.

And there is also no exact, agreed upon definition as to what constitutes a "significant" difference in an ending auction price. So, to make any such a statement that something is an indisputable fact, or not, when one of the determining parameters is such a subjective, and not objective, measure, is totally inappropriate. You can't indisputably prove or disprove anything that is a subjective measure.

That there were additional bids proves nothing. The same bids might have come in had there been no glitches and the auction stayed open until its natural close the previous night. To get technical, you need to compare the outcome with the "but for" world, not the actual world.

There was a shipping charge in my invoice, so I assume that’s not happening.

I won two lots. The one lot my bid from Sunday held up. The other lot I got into a bidding war I would not have gotten into if the auction had ended as planned. I put a bid in Sunday night and would not have bid again after midnight. I then decided to bid again monday night and went back and forth with another bidder. My late bidding on Monday drove the price up 2k from my previous bid early Sunday night. Had the action not been extended someone would have gotten a very very good deal on a a very rare card

I was bidding on four items Monday that doubled or almost doubled in price from the time of Sundays glitch. I was able to hang on and win one item but it was a bloodbath. The same run up may have happened on Sunday if everything had played out as planned so I'm not going to bitch about it.

Uh, because some of your fellow board members have indicated that they got into bidding wars over cards and wouldn't have engaged in same had the auction not been extended.

The PSA 1.5 1931-32 4-1 Ruth/Gehrig Exhibit price surprised me. Is there something with the issue? Or is it because of the Ruth/Gehrig price surge?

Uh, some of my fellow board members also said they were out, they weren't bidding again because of what happened.

Just curious, did you go back on Monday and bid higher on items that you wouldn't have on Sunday?

I personally DID NOT bid after sunday eve...and I lost the ruth card I wanted most by 1 bid. i'm sure some DID bid after sunday...and some did not?

Right, while some people chose to bid on Monday and say they bid more than they would have on Sunday night, others like you may have decided not to bid any more even if they were going to on Sunday night had there not been a problem. That's why I said earlier that it's possible the overall impact of the extra day could have been minimal or even negative. There's really no way to know when you take the reactions of all bidders into account, not just the handful posting on this board.

Personally, I bid on one item Monday that I would have continued to bid on Sunday night and ended up winning it for a price that I would have been comfortable at on Sunday night. Most of the other lots I had been bidding on got no bids in the extra day, but a few did.

This is why the plural of anecdote is not data.

Peter,

Robert's post #170 specifically says that if not for the additional day of bidding he wouldn't have had the chance to raise extra funds to bid more. I wasn't trying to prove anything, I was merely pointing out to another poster that the extended bidding did in fact result in additional bids, in this particular REA auction, that would not have occurred otherwise. I never stated, or even insinuated, that such additional bids resulted in higher ending auction prices, or that similar bids could not have come in had the original REA auction close proceeded with no glitches.

I then went even further to note and point out how the other poster's talk of "indisputable facts" was inappropriate because he was using a subjective measure ("significantly" different ending prices), which can never be definitively (and indisputably) proven or disproven. However, it was to also show support for that other poster's position that it absolutely is not an "indisputable fact" that an extended bidding period resulting from a tech glitch will automatically result in additional bids causing higher ending prices. Again, I merely noted that you can't claim something as an indisputable fact if it has any subjective component in it, which for the most part is what Jay was saying. I was responding to Steve's earlier post through Jay's response to that same earlier post, and addressing the way both of them were saying/presenting certain things.

So, "to get technical", what exactly did I say or do wrong? If you are incorrectly assuming or insinuating I stated or implied something that I did not, and just went to all the trouble to explain even more why and how I didn't, then so be it. I've already had the occasion on this forum before to go through the trouble of explaining my position and meaning on something, only to have someone come back and actively argue that I didn't mean what I had just said I meant. How the f@ck can that be, that my opinion and what I said I meant is not what I said and meant by it? Talk about trying to put words in someone else's mouth. But I digress as I'm sure that is not the case in this instance.

That's what I would assume, too. My opinion would be that REA probably got more money by this happening, but I'm not seeing it as intentional, nor do I think it's an "indisputable fact."

I put in a leading bid on Sunday at 10 and promptly got off my computer, so I missed a LOT of sturm and drang. By Tuesday morning, I was still high bidder, so either I'm lucky or I overpaid.

I wasn't attacking or disagreeing with you. I was just following up with an observation that the fact that there were additional bids on Monday -- which you had referenced -- does not, in and of itself, establish anything. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Untrue in my case. Had the auction ended Sunday night I would not have bid higher, I had already been outbid and gone to sleep. Decided to bid higher on Monday and only had to bid one increment higher to win so there were no other bidders at that level or higher on Sunday.

It should not be lost in this discussion that REA, after the outage, immediately opened all lots back up again with the 10-minute timers going. I was watching while this happened and it's clear to me that many bids were placed at that time by people who thought that it would be their last opportunity. The announcement (unless I missed an email from them) of the 24-hour extension was not made until later.

I have a hard believing that they did not make a whole bunch more money because of the way this was handled.

Understood, although there likely are people in the opposite camp.

Received my one winning bid today. I've been looking for an E103 for my type collection for awhile and this fit the bill: HOFer, nice coloring, decent centering, no creases....just (sorry) "honest corner wear". Would have loved either of the other two in the auction, but I couldn't afford them (an EX Lajoie and a VG+ Mathewson).

For what it's worth, I placed bids during the extended bidding after midnight but stopped when it was clear that the auction was not going to end until the next day (technically, much later the same day). There was no reason to stay up at that point, but I would have if another day had not been added to the auction. I placed the winning bid before extended bidding on Monday and it held up.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about all lots being opened again after the outage. Since the outage happened just after midnight, no lots would have been closed yet so it would make sense that everything remained open to allow for extended bidding to take place. Once it became apparent that the problems were not fixed, I think they decided to extend for a day. I agree with what someone posted yesterday that there should not have been such a long delay between getting the auction back up and sending out any additional communication about what had happened and what was going to be happening with the auction.

What I mean is that, when the site became functional again (I didn't note the exact time, but I think it was somewhere between 12:15 and 1:20 EST), the site indicated that the auctions were going to end after another 10 minute per-lot timer.

Seeing this, I would have bid based on this information at the time if not for Leon's post (correctly) prognosticating that they would eventually extend it by another full day.

congrats to you
 

Hi Pete, thanks to you and Ryan for the nice comments. Great pick up on the Joe Joe! I love it! And Ryan, that Wagner pre rookie is awesome!

Most people in this thread are only looking at it from one side depending on what they believe.

As you pointed out it's impossible to know what the difference is or would have been if there was no glitch.

Probably the closest comparison you can get is to compare the overtime bidding in recent REA auctions.

Here is a comparison of the overtime bids in this auction to the recent fall auction and last springs auction for the first 20 lots in each auction.

These are the bids in each auction in overtime when you can only bid on items that you had previously bid on. In two cases a lot didn't meet the reserve so I used the numbers from lot 21.

This auction 170 bids in overtime 71 of them on Monday
2021 fall auction 65 bids in overtime
2021 spring auction 160 bids in overtime

So there was 10 more bids in this auction than there were last springs auction on the first 20 lots. Lot number 7 the signed t202 Cobb in this auction received 42 bids in overtime 33 of them were on Monday.

I'll stick with my original premise: if an AH took a financial hit from one of these outages/delays . . . IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

Based on what? Outages happen even to major companies all the time, you seem to think an AH is capable of making itself outage and glitch proof, not so.

https://www.newsweek.com/major-websi...0-2021-1640031

And I'll stick with what I said here.

This is/was my sentiment. And because of this I didn't bid on Monday. Of the two lots that I really wanted, one was near my maximum on Sunday and I was the underbidder. I probably would have gone another hundred or two on it at most Sunday night. Monday it got no bids and went for the high it had Sunday night. I was the high bidder on the other lot on Sunday night and was willing to go $700 above that. Monday it got a bid 7 minutes into the extended bidding to take the lead. Since I wasn't watching the auction, that's what it went for 10 minutes later.

So in these two data points, two consigners lost money as did REA. At least $100 on each lot and depending on the other bidder for the second lot, up to $700 on that one.

So no, it is not an indisputable fact that everyone made more money. Although it is indisputable that I have more money in my bank account because of the Monday extension. :D