Note to auction houses
 

Taking off the month of January ain’t a good business plan. There’s this thing called year end bonuses. Not for everyone of course but for a lot of workers. Seriously. You should look into it.

Sterling's next auction starts on Thursday January 25
Hunt's regular auction ended last week
Bagger's auctions end next Thursday

Lelands
Memory Lane
Baggers
Sterling
Sirius
Joe's vintage
Clean Sweep
Paragon
Iconic
Hunt
Brockelman
Huggins & Scott

Not everyone took a month off. It has to be near impossible to run a monster auction every month. Most of the big AH's ran something in December.

Huggins & Scott starts next week. I know because we've been in overdrive putting together our 1700+ lot auction.

tip of the day ... twitter is the perfect place to post random thoughts that have little to no basis of fact.

Huggins and Scott starts on January 26.

Sometimes it’s hard to complain in 240 characters or less.

no worries on this latest one. 193.

https://www.lettercount.com/

Hahaha. I’m actually glad it’s not in January. I’d totally blow a chunk of it at the auctions. Property tax. Savings??? Naaaahhh. Give me a slab

One of my best offerings starts Monday.


Brockelman Auctions

Scott,

I’m really looking forward to the auction. What time on Monday will it be up?

It will be open for bidding at 10:00 am EST Monday Jan 22nd.

Several key pieces that have been out of the hobby for some time, as well as other mainstream Pre-war and a very large selection of Post-war in singles, groups, partial and complete sets from 1948-1972. Part of which is from the original owner circa 1958-1964 of sports and non-sports.

How does one even keep track of all these auctions? I'm sure I miss many.

Yeah, sure, there are a bunch of them kicking off soon. If I ran an AH I'd have a major auction with high end stuff end every year first week in January. Talk to anyone who sells cars.

I had a live auction January 13th

www.auctionreport.com is one resource for upcoming auctions.

you should have started it the first week of the month. because a lot of cars were sold then.

Some people are making comments about auctions that start in the end of January or simply mocking the OP, but I think he has a very valid point.

For the first 2-3 weeks in January there are almost no active auctions going. This is at a time when tons of people got end-of-year bonuses, holiday gifts, have returns presents they received etc. and have money to spend.

It may not make sense for all the auction houses to change their schedules to have a major auction then, but I imagine if a couple did so, they could benefit from the additional funds (many) people have, combined with it being a dead time hobby-wise.

And while there are many auctions that start towards the end of January, I feel like in many cases by then (especially since the auctions usually run for weeks) people will have spent the money or moved on from the feeling of "I just got a bonus, let me go find something"

Who has no auction in January?? Trying to figure out who the jab was directed at.

I hate auction houses that run an auction for a whole month. Believe Goldin has one like that. You just lose track of when it ends and there really is no purpose to let it drag out for a whole month. If you can't get bidders interested in two weeks then you might as well not even run one.

He didn't say/mean exactly that. I think Steve meant, at the start of January there are no big AH closings to spend money on. And btw, I agree with Steve on this. If an auction house were to end a big auction in the first 2 weeks it would be less competition for our dollars. It's not rocket science. When I did retail computer sales on a showroom floor (around 27 yrs ago, yikes) no one wanted to work Sat or Sun. Guess when retaIl customers shop in person? I worked every weekend and was immediately the 2nd highest sales salesperson out of around 15. One guy had some big accounts and wasn't to be overtaken. But it was easy, I just worked when no one else wanted to AND when I knew customers would come in.

In the retail world, January is typically the slowest month of the year as people are still recovering from the holiday shopping season.

Also, many year-end bonuses are not actually paid out until Feb or March since many companies' fiscal year ends after January.

That said, I think ANY time of the year is a good time for an auction if you have great stuff.

Personally, I think running an auction the 1st week or two of the year would be a disaster. I fully agree with the idea that people may have received year end bonuses and it can pay well to work when there is no competition. However, I believe most people count on and have spent their bonuses before they actually receive them. As such, the funds aren't available for extra purchasing. The first 2 weeks of the year generally would coincide with when the first credit card payment after the holidays would be due. As a result, people would be short funded due to paying off their holiday credit card bill. I also don't think using car sales is a fair comparison since most people take out a loan to purchase a car, but i don't know too many auction houses that let people purchase on credit.

DJ

I would think March/April tax refund season would be the most fruitful.

Except that most of the self employed and individuals operating as LP's/LLC's/S-Corps etc. are paying taxes at that time, not getting refunds.

However as Jeff stated, any time is usually fine, the bidders that win the majority of the lots in auctions, large to small are liquid and prepared to buy at any time of the year or can quickly raise capital if needed.

Actually, any discussion forum is perfect for doing that. Someone should start a "worst of Net54" thread and you would remember.

Well-stated Scott. A lot of people don't really get that. If you only buy and sell high-dollar stuff, you can buy and sell any time of the year, any state of the economy.

I would like to hear the rebuttal to the reasoning that if there are less auctions closing there will be more focused eyes on it/them? If one is ending every other day then there is less focus. At least that is the way my brain works. I was actually looking for things to bid on a few weeks ago and there weren't many that were closing ie..instant gratification. We all have our own views....

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