Chatted With Bill Goodwin Today
 

Called about an invoice, no big deal, but since I had him on phone asked about any possible changes in auction ending rules, given the uproar in some quarters over the end of this week's auctions which came at, what, 6 a.m. in the East? He was very friendly and responsive and talked about pros and cons of various ideas. He said, yes, it has gotten much worse lately so he would like to make change, but to what?

Says he once tried ending the lots separately but it was a "disaster'--many complained. Ending all at a fixed time, say 1 a.m., also draws complaints because people like to jump to other lots if they lose one. And so on. He says though there appears to be little action in the middle of the night a lot of dough gets bid on higher end lots. He ended by asking me for ANY ideas, very open to hearing, so if you want to propose some below, please do. Of course, it's a problem with several auctions, not just his.

the obvious answer is to end all lots at the same time, midnight or so. just tell people to have their top bid in all their lots by that time. if you need to go back and try to squeeze in another bid under the wire, then you didnt have your top bid in. so just put your top bid in by 11:30 and don't worry about it.

One thing I noticed when I was looking at the rules is that Goodwin doesn't have a " If the auction is still running at 3:00 AM EST on the morning of (Date), it may be ended at any time at the sole discretion of the auction house" disclaimer that Sterling and REA has. Those last few hours were bids at a trickle of maybe 1 every 7 minutes so a disclaimer to end it anytime after 2 or 3 AM would probably be the best way to go.

That said, this Goodwin was all about that one guy who bid on like 15 T206s in a row at 4 AM. That's what really extended the auction out

Just refuse to play, it's just stuff.

yes. increase the time for each lot, from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. this will allow flipping between lots, yet time out the ones with no activity.

people that want lots will adjust, getting proxy bidders to bid for them or expanding to have multiple monitors to watch all of their auctions, or having a single consolidated place to bid on things rather than having to have a giant page open to bid. a simple list view with a button, current price, next bid and bid button in more than enough.

for the love of god. if they need a developer, so kevin doesn't have stay up till 7am on every auction, he may just volunteer some design ideas and development time.

kevin

I like the idea that Clean Sweep uses, they increases the buyers premium as the night goes on, to discourage extending the auction late. Bids placed after 1am and the buyers premium increases by 5% from the base premium, after 2am and the premium increases by 10% from the base premium. This encourages bidders to get their max bids in prior to 1am.

Personally, I like lots to close individually, but if the auction house wants to close all lots at one time, say that if not already closed the auction ends at 1 AM EDT. Personally, I don't think the format of the auction affects the final prices very much. It only affects the amount of sleep people get. Auctions end at 4AM or later because some bidders feel they can gain an advantage by bidding late. Take the advantage away and they will simply bid earlier.

Yeap....bidders will bid within the system. We are adaptable.

+1

Jay, agree right now these things run till Amish barn raising hours as part of folks strategy’s in the hope that bidders will have fallen off to sleep or rolled out of frustration. It’s sort of really a low tech snipe strategy with the person on the other end acting as the “last second computer” placing the bid in the wee hours.

Why not just change the 15 minute rule to 10 minutes, or less? End the initial bidding an hour earlier, put in a five minute rule instead, bids will run out sooner

Agree with Jay completely. Just put in the rules the auction will end around 1:00 AM and everyone will get their bids in and no money will be left on the table. People only bid when they are compelled to do so.

Yea that's the perfect solution, 15 minutes 10-12, 10 minutes 12-2 and 5 minutes afterwards...15 minutes is just too long at 3AM and someone will end up talking themselves into another bid.

Honestly I'd probably move the close time to 8 PM and make the countdown 5 minutes after midnight

If you had 1000 bidders, 200 of them probably wouldn't understand what you just said. Keeping it simple, whatever the solution is, would probably be best.

I've thought about this and have one possible solution.

Organize lots into random groupings. When one grouping doesn't have any bids after 15-30 Mins, all lots in that grouping close simultaneously. It would be purely random, as to make an incentive for people to bid earlier, any lot can close at any moment.

Move
 

I've decided to move to Hawaii so the bidding is ending at midnight my time !! I love Hawaii !!

Individual clocks or a hard close time.

Not sure lowering the clock time will help as I rarely see it drop below 13 minutes for the first few hours.

This takes out the aspect of a bidding war, which can lead to higher prices. If AHs ended everything at a set time, it would become nothing more than a glorified eBay auction where all the lots end at once.

I was going to suggest the change to 8-10 minute bidding, but John beat me to the punch, so I'll just agree with his idea. They could also start extended bidding a 8pm, although that probably doesn't matter much.

I am amazed when an AH ends an auction on a weekday, though, and we saw it happen twice this week. I thought they all ended on Fri/Sat night, or at least they should.

pajama people.

I like the format where each lot has it's own 15 min. extended bidding clock.
.....either that or old fashioned auctions of one lot at a time...going once, going twice, sold..... next lot.

Guam
 

I've bought a few cards on ebay from a guy in Guam. I think that's the guy who keeps outbidding me.

Seriously, I don't mind any of the formats. However y'all do it is fine with me. On Goodwin and Sterling I just wake up early and bid.

Bill Goodwin is running a business -- a business in which he needs to get the most money for his consignors or he loses them -- and loses his business. Why stop the auction when he's bringing in more money for his consignors (and him)? As noted above, it's the BIDDERS' faults who run the auction so late through the night, figuring that they'll hold out as long as possible to bid so that their competition will drop out. Don't blame the auction house for this. We have the right to complain about fraud, not the fact that the AH wants to make more money for its consignors.

PS I was up half the night bidding on one card; had I known the auction would run until 6:45 I would have set my alarm for 6:43; however, that's the chance you have to take if you want the card bad enough. I got the card.

Nice
 

Jeff,

Well said !!

I like the action!
 

I like the action of the last man standing or at least awake. It gives the auction its thrill to me. I hate the idea of an auction ending at say midnight and you hope that your max bid was enough. No offense to any auction company out there or anyone who runs one(Scott, Leon, Bill, Lee, Steve Etc.), but I don't put max bids out there anymore, because I'm cynical and it is hard for me to know who to trust and who not to who might put shill bids in to jack up my prices until my max. I guess I'm trying to say it is better in my opinion to not do max bids for any auction, not just pick and choose. Ending them all at a specific time might add to more shill bidding in my opinion.
Tim

Why not a nooner?
 

I just really don't understand why the rules have to be changed as they seem to be quite fair for almost all parties concerned...but if everyone is sleep deprived and it is such an issue that it takes five or six pages of possible rule changes so people can get into their jammies at the time they prefer...why not just have the auction close at NOON. Problem solved! Auction will then exhaust itself in time for bed for all. Why is a noon closing not a plausible solution

I prefer it where the lots close individually if there isn't any action on them for a prescribed period of time, probably because the crap I collect seldom has more than one or two bidders anyway so I'd just as soon see it closed. Otherwise, if two or more bidders want to spend all night on an item, let them.

The war by attrition thing works: I partnered with a friend on a lot in a recent auction and we lost it because he fell asleep during the auction and did not place the next bid before it closed...

As a former collector and someone who works in the industry....the 30 minute rule per lot is probably the most popular option. I've never had a complaint from a consignor in the 7 years I've been with the auction house.

Close the lots one at a time. There was an auction not long ago that did this--a lot closed every 15 minutes. If you lost out, you still have time to get the next one, and when you know when your favorite lots are going to close, you can focus your attention on those time periods and not sit in front of the computer all night.

No Problem
 

It really doesn't matter to me how the auctions close. I know how much I am will to pay for a particular card. I can put in my max bid and go to bed and check it in the morning. If I win - great. If I don't it doesn't matter because I would not have increased my max anyway.

Rick

Yes, well said.

I'm not sure the late night model works the best for consignors, although obviously several would disagree. Seems to me that there are many who go to bed and put in their "max", which is fine. But if they knew their max would not hold up, say, because that lot ended earlier, they would have more money to go and bid up other lots. Going to bed and having to put in your "max" on multiple lots forces you to hedge. So those people who choose to go to bed may have spent more if they either stayed up (which they apparently do not want to do) or if the lots ended one by one.

Now here is a smart man, bids with his head, not his heart, and comes out better for it. If you feel regret that you should have bid more, then bid more.

Just put max bid and there will always be another card around the corner if you don't win this one. When did auction houses run out of cards?

I think that's a great idea, though at some point I would reduce it to a two minute rule (to force bidders to literally stay glued to their computers). As to Leon's point that such a rule would be too complicated, I understand the logic behind that concern but feel bidders will figure it out. A middle-ground solution might be to start out with a two-minute rule.

With all due respect, I don't think a two or five minute rule works. The period is too short to allow people with a lot of bids to adjust them and heaven forbid they need to hit the bathroom too. I think the best solution is to close lots individually. Otherwise, if I were running an auction and I wanted all the lots to close at one time I would use a 15 minute rule, but I would say that the auction would end at some point between 1AM and 1:15AM EDT, regardless of the bidding. The end time in this period would be based on a predetermined time that only the auctioneer would know, and would be different for every auction. With this system you would avoid everyone trying to "snipe" at 12:59 because the auction might go to 1:15. However, because the auction would end at a random time between 1:00 and 1:15 it makes all bidders get their final bids in at some time around 1:00. Now, let's say the random end time that only the auctioneer knew was 1:04. At 1:00 and ten seconds bidders would notice that the auction had not ended. They could thus safely assume that they had until at least 1:01 to bid and thus could sneak in an extra bid if they wanted. This would repeat itself at 1:01 and ten seconds, at 1:02 and ten seconds and at 1:03 and ten seconds. However, at 1:04 it would end and anyone trying to be cute by holding off bidding would be closed out.

This is the correct answer. Any other situation will cause much more complaints then there already are.

Auctions
 

I have to agree here. I think a 2-5 minute rule would be difficult as would auctions ending individually. I can't imagine bidding on 10 itesm trying to track the ending time of each auction - or even having multiple screens up with the countdown timers showing.

Z Wheat

I really don't see how having the lots ending individually, in lot order, is difficult to track or unfair to anyone, especially if there is a good 5 minutes in between. I rarely have bids on more than 10 items I really want. I am not so challenged as to be unable to track or know for weeks in advance when I need to pay attention to those particular auctions ending-- I doubt anyone here is either.

What Goodwin and most other auctions do now is no different than the ebay seller who has several auctions all ending at the same time, only here they keep hidden that ending time. Several such ebay sellers have been criticized as leaving money on the table because unsuccessful bidders do not have time to adjust and bid again on other items. How many here have come up empty or not won as many cards as they would have wanted because of this practice--leaving money in their pockets that they would happily have spent?

The one point I agree with is that whatever rule is put in effect the end result should be to maximize the total dollars the auction grosses, as opposed to maximizing bidder satisfaction. I have never felt closing each lot individually does that because many bidders are interested in more than one lot. If these bidders have limited funds (a situation that applies to the great majority of bidders), a bid on one lot might be contingent on having given up on another lot.

Or, to say it another way, I do not believe ending lots individually maximizes the return to the consignors.

I think it would be worth experimenting with a rule that reduces the 15-minute rule to something less, for example a 10-minute rule that after a certain hour (say, two hours after extended bidding begins) reduces to a five-minute rule. I would also begin the extended bidding at an earlier hour (say, 6PM) and see what happens. Maybe it will be the case the auction will end at a reasonable time and bidders when polled will not be complaining they did not understand the rules or did not have time to get in their bids.

That might work fine for a small auction, but didn't Goodwin's most recent auction had 959 lots? Let's see, at 5 minutes betwen lots, for 959 lots, you're going to have lots ending every 5 minutes around the clock for over 3 days. Even if you end 1 lot every minute, you're still looking at 16 hours of lots ending, which is more than the complained-about duration that started this thread...

I do not necessarily agree. Some auctions already have two separate ending dates with nobody really complaining. So what if it's three. The damn things are listed for three weeks anyway.

I don't think there is a good solution for this. The best that I can think of, which is relatively simple is split the auction so it ends over multiple days. Legendary and Heritage already do this for individual lot endings, but SCP does it for all lots at once. Instead of over 2days, you can do it over 3 or 4, and have it, if no bids for 15 min, all lots close for the ones that end that day. With fewer lots each day, theoretically, the auction should close earlier each day. One way to divide it is prewar baseball, vintage/modern baseball, other sports/nonsports, memorabilia. The big drawback is that if you want lots from multiple days, you may have multiple long nights ahead of you instead of one long night.

Interesting how many different opinions we have here, with no real consensus. Bottom line is the auctioneer has to decide how he wants to end it. If 6:00 AM is too late then he has options to end it sooner. His call.

Auction houses will never do anything that loses them money ... that's why they have zero transparency, why they give you no financial recourse if an item is delivered not as described, and why they do the 15 minute rule for extended bidding.

You're all lucky they don't change that to the 30 minute rule. The longer people have to bid the more opportunities they have to make money.

If the auction houses really wanted to help the collector they'd do away with the extended bidding all together, and end things at a scheduled time, as is done on ebay.

that's right, they should do it like ebay if they wanted to bring things back to sanity. and if someone feels regret that they didnt get a chance to put in one final topping bid, then simply bid higher earlier in the day. how hard is that?