Goldin
 

Am I wrong, or did Goldin just extend the auction that was supposed to end tonight for another 24 hours without making an announcement or releasing a statement?

Edit: Got an email at 10:28 EST. Around 26 minutes after they extended the auction for the day.

I thought it was going to be in extended bidding, then I see another day. I'm equally confused.

email
 

email just came out.....24 hours added.

Think they will retract all bids after 9PM Cent/10PM Eastern? Seems they let everyone expose their bidding strategies. :)

It seemed like the site was slow for maybe the last 5 minutes before extended bidding. Not sure if that is what did it.

But with millions of dollars of items up for bid, and sellers and bidders watching and waiting, it seems like a decision like that warrants a tweet at the very least.

https://twitter.com/goldinauctions/s...288432129?s=21


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was high bidder on a few items as time was ticking down, and pretty happy about that.............................................. ....

Only to discover that, yet again, there will be an extra day added to the auction.

Why even hold an auction if the plans are to move everything to their own network. Get everything moved over, test it, then have the auction. How many times can the same mistake be repeated. Its essentially incompetence.


Due to a server crash to overwhelming traffic spike, per our prior messaging if such an event occurs , the auction will now close Tomorrow Monday August 8th at 10pm eastern for initial bidding . All session 2 lots will remain open until then. We are sorry for the inconvenience and remind everyone we have been working aggressively to get off our existing 3rd party platform and onto our own network powered by AWS. This will be occurring shortly so we can avoid these issues and handle any traffic demands. The auction remains open and bids may be placed at https://goldinauctions.com/catalog.aspx

With over 8,000 lots in this auction (I believe that is the largest they ever had) I understand running the auction. I'm more confused why they didn't use some of the precautions they instituted in the past around auction closing.

Edit: And I wish there was more communication. If there were traffic issues for 2 hours before the end of the auction (I only noticed issues in the last 2-3 when it seemed slow, but others may have had a different experience), then they should have posted something earlier. Not wait until everyone submitted their final bids that they could get in, bid on auctions they thought were in extended bidding etc. and then announce that they are adding a day to the auction.

Sisyphian. That sucks. Good luck tomorrow.

I'm done bidding. Either my bids that would've won tonight hold up or they don't. I'm not playing this game.

Usually when a company continues to have problems that go unresolved like this, it's to the company's detriment. In this case, another day just means, on some lots, more and higher bids.

Ugh Ugh Ugh

[QUOTE=NYYFan63;2131717]https://twitter.com/goldinauctions/s...288432129?s=21

Due to an unprecedented high level of web traffic. They need to get that figured out.

[QUOTE=robertsmithnocure;2131731]hopefully it is not a "tactic". To get another "final days and final Hours" of potential bids to drive up the auction prices and thus there Buyer Premium.
Although also good for the consigner

Their lot descriptions on ungraded cards leave a lot to be desired. How can you sell a complete set of 1965 Topps cards ungraded with the only description Fair to New Mint??? I asked for at least a generic breakdown like ‘10% NM, 25%EX to EXMT, 50% VG/VG+, balance F/G’ and although they promised in an email they would send me one, they never did. Cards Fair to NearMint? Wow.

Same sh-t, different day

This isn’t the first or 10th time this has happened with Goldin. I hardly pay attention to their auctions anymore because it’s always something with the “server” that a fix has been “in the works” for about a year now

Sadly but I agree experienced to often

The auction was open for weeks. People had plenty of time to get their initial bids placed instead of treating it like eBay with last minute snipes before extended bidding. Maybe the server crashes because of the 15 email updates a day they send out.

I know they were bought out but did not know they had a new CEO.

I started looking again at the auction around 8:30 and noticed it was a little slower than normal. So I came back before I normally would and started putting final bids on lots AFTER their extended bidding email went out. It was definitely slow but with patience all of my bids were accepted. I was even outbid after being the high bidder during that time. I put final bids in on most all of the items I wanted and at about 10:25, felt like I'd have a pretty good night.

The "I'm sorry we let you down" messages ring hollow to me. The site was slow but it never actually crashed, I don't think (or if it did, it was for a very short time). Also, if they were having problems starting at 8PM, extend well before extended bidding and don't send the extended bidding email to everyone. It plays like they weren't happy with the pricing so they thought another day would help.

...as I said to someone last night, I need to keep reminding myself that it's just cards and not life and death. Still stinks, though!!

I received an email from them (and their new CEO, Ross Hoffman), just before noon today explaining that they had problems last night. I assume everyone else got the same email.

https://www.pingdom.com/

“.30 minutes of downtime”

Happy to talk to you if you'd like. I was speaking from my experience and I was on your website from about 9:30 until 10:30 refreshing frequently. I experienced slow responses but never an outage. Further, if you knew there was an issue, you should never have issued the extended bidding email but stopped or extended the auction instead.

..as I said, happy to talk to you. You have my name above and my number is on file with you. Feel free to call. Thanks!

Have you seen the great cards currently available at REA, Heritage, & LOTG?

Can't blame you one bit for "standing pat", and my sentiments exactly. I would never even be able to enjoy the winnings because of the unexpected incremental bidding activity brought about by this decision.

In Goldin's defense, it's a "no-win" situation... Either their consignors are pissed off at the untimely outage, or their bidders are angry that they have renewed competition, just when their winnings appeared to be a lock.

It sucks both ways but regardless, I personally will now refrain from participating in this event. Just too much other eye candy beckoning in LOTG and REA.

I have had positive experiences with Goldin.

Powell Miller

As a buyer and consignor in their auctions.......I too would prefer no hiccups, but it happens.......and damn do they get results!

They made me 16x what I paid for it just a couple months later. Incredible!

https://goldinauctions.com/LotDetail...entoryid=98783

I don't blame Goldin for running the auction, or even for deciding to extend it for another day. What's particularly frustrating to me is the fact there was no communication until afterwards. If the site was stalling or slow before 10:00, they should have sent an email noting that and indicating they would potentially be extending the bidding for another day. I also don't understand why they didn't use some of the approaches to auction closing that they've used over the last few auctions after there were issues. With 8,000+ lots, they could have split it over 3-4 days etc.

Regarding communication, all I'd want is:

1. An email in advance that says something like, "in the event that the site is down for xx amount of time within xx amount of time of auction close, it will be extended for another day."
   
2. Updates if there are slowdowns
   
3. A banner on each auction page that shows "auction has been extended" if that is the case.

Ironically for me, the slowness of the site meant that I couldn't raise my bid on an auction I was going after in the overtime tonight, so I didn't win it. Paid an extra $50 on the one item I won, so no huge impact, and not particularly bothered by the item I didn't win (but was winning last night). But the idea that extending was "fairer" is disingenuous. It is better for the sellers, which I get.

JEFF
you are correct, better communication could have been done. we had 3700 lots not 8000+, the SAS software counts each category as a lot for some reason so if something has multiple categories it counts it as a lot. 10 auctions in a row without a hitch on SAS made is think they finally got their act together on Azure, and gave us some time to work on perfecting our own platform, and we were not as prepared for a potential issue last night as we normally were in the past. that wont happen again

Seems like many high value cards didn't sell in this recent auction.... same thing happened in their last few auctions too. I guess consignors have high expectations and everyone hoping for record breaking prices or else they rather not sell them.

I appreciate the response. (And thanks for the correction on the lot number).

Hoping going forward we are past these issues, but if not, I think having a template with a communication plan would go a long way.

communication
 

there was communication on the night of August 8. slow as molasses but of a sudden the green lettering showing the time to go changed from about 4 minutes on the lot I was bidding on to 23 hours. I confess I was baffled and did not understand at first that the auction was postponed 24 hours, but very soon thereafter I had a gmail message from Golden with an explanation.

for those of us who were trying desperately to bid or do anything, it was nearly impossible if you had more than one lot to navigate. I was glad the auction was postponed, but it changed my bidding strategies entirely.

People who lie down with dogs are probably going to get fleas. That's their choice, but don't wonder or complain about feeling itchy.

Amazing how he sold that "auction house" or whatever happened there.


More surprising people still bid.


Shenanigans!


Stuff trumps all

Agreed

i just realized Ken Goldin is no longer the CEO.

What I bid ended up holding overnight, and the issue on my PC was clearly slow but not totally down. But we needed a banner flash for sure. And terms and conditions should be rewritten to clarify their duties and what happens to bids in such circumstances.

He is Executive Director or something like that, you wonder if it's a real position or just nominal and Nat is running the show with his own people. From what I've seen of Ken, and this is a compliment, he seems the type of guy that would not be happy not being in control.

Congrats on the win Steve. I would only say with all their famous fancy investors, bullshit YouTube hype, and media marketing, the one thing they should get right is process. That's if they cared about folks like us of course.

Hey now, it's the auction house for the millennial crypto iPhone twitter Instagram snapchat tshirt exquisite national treasure prizm 1/1 investor sneaker gem rate age. Get on board!!

If you guys are really using SAS to handle your data, or even just to interact with it, then you've hired the wrong people.