Auction house closing times
 

Can someone please explain to me how this timeframe benefits ANYONE? Why would an auction house -- or ANY business -- inconvenience potential customers this much? 2:45 a.m. on a weekday -- I just can't fathom the rationale.

This is actually a vast improvement over how many auctions used to close. I.e., whole action closed at 530am.

Is this business segment run by methamphetamine addicts? Why would anyone choose this?

They are making sure their west coast customers don't miss out. I hate it as well, but they don't care about inconveniencing you, if a bid gets placed again in the middle of the night its more money for the consigner AND them. Its the reason they all do it this way.

University Archives runs its auction starting at 10 a.m. ET. I think a West Coaster can roll their ass out of bed at 7 a.m. for that a lot easier than an East Coaster can stay up till 2:45 a.m.

I suspect they think that their primary bidding demographic is located in Southeast Asia, so they're focused on making sure that those bidders can leisurely submit their final bids in the afternoon while the rest of us are sound asleep.

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East Coast gets the National every year, West Coast gets better auction times.

And so it was written by the card collecting Gods...
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I guess this is America, and we outsource everything, so perhaps someone in Vietnam is overseeing this auction from 12:30-2:45 p.m.

Another potential problem
 

You lose a day at the Date Line when going to Viet Nam.

I guess , when bidding recently, I bid ( while still awake) my max and then go to bed. Usually I don’t win this way, but I have never liked this practice of “ regular bidding over….but wait….now EXTENDED bidding begins.” Many other venues I have participated in, like Gunbroker, have a specific beginning and end, and you can plan and count on that. There have been a lot of cool items this year on these auctions, but I absolutely hate extending bidding hours and hours after it should have ended. Nothing will change, the powers won’t read any of this, but sometimes, it’s good to vent.

I hear you, Mike. Maybe they believe we're prone to make worse decisions with our money late at night.

Memory Lane's auctions consistently end at 5AM EST...some have gone later. I think I saw one that went until 9AM a few years ago. Judging by prices they get in every auction I would say it has not been a deterrent whatsoever. Buyers have insane stamina and tolerance for almost anything, it seems, as long as you offer them a card they need. Cards first and absolutely everything else is a distant second.

Phil, even though you are a West Coaster, I assume you are aware that Chicago is on the shore of Lake Michigan, which I don't believe is considered the East Coast! :)

Hope all is going well for you.

The point of extended bidding is to more accurately mimic a live auction. Could you imagine going to a live auction where, while an item was receiving bids, an auctioneer said, "whoops, sorry, time is up on that lot"

The best match would be a format where each lot ended after the previous lot finished receiving bids, which some general auction houses actually use, but if you think auctions run late now, yikes. If you only have a few hundred lots it's barely doable, but a 3000 lot auction could literally take a week to close.

To make it even remotely feasible the extended bidding models have evolved. I will say I definitely prefer the model where lost close on their own individual clocks, where one bid can't keep the entire auction open. But again, an auction of a given item isn't supposed to end at an arbitrary time, that is completely anathema to the point of an auction. An auction is supposed to end when nobody wants to place any more bids.

I think all this can be achieved before midnight EST.

As people get more and more tired (and in some cases more drunk) they get more irrational. :D And if you're an auction house, if it's working, don't fix it.

If it’s a lot by lot basis - as the provided image is - then 90% of the auction will close in first hour of extended bidding. In this auction case you also have to apready have previous bid on a specific lot to be eligible for extended bidding so that’s going to cut close times as well.

But yes, staying up past our bedtime to win baseball cards is an inherently 1st world problem.

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Hi Val,

All quiet on the western front, thanks for asking. I got excited for you when I saw a Sam Rice Witmor come up in a recent auction, unfortunately it wasn't a vertical back.

And I suppose the East/West demarcation line is geographically relevant, everything East of the Rockies is East Coast to me :-)

They do it because it maximizes realizations; if it didn't, or if they didn't believe it did, they wouldn't do it. The auctioneers don't enjoy staying up late any more than you do.

1119. Nightsnagging
Any West Coast bidder using the two or three ‘extra’ hours to score auction wins as a huge portion of his competition lies asleep in bed due to the time difference.

See also: Discounting Sheep - a mocking way to describe the money you’ve saved as your competition was too busy getting some shut-eye to bid in the auction.

Auctions that drag on forever, often into the next day-break are definitely a problem; but on the other hand, so are auctions that end too soon.

For example, a recent auction had what was essentially a 15 minute-long extended bidding period. I put in bids on over two dozen items during normal bidding; then in extended bidding, there was simply not enough time to increase my bids on the items I was most interested in. I won three lots, but there were three other lots that ended a minute or two before I got to them. Interestingly, all six items ended at what most would consider low winning bids.

Auctions need to give bidders enough time to bid, but not drag on forever.

Steve

Sorry you got shut out of some items you wanted Steve, but I don't understand how you can not watch 24 (or less actually since you said the items you were most interested in, which implies less than everything you bid on) in 15 minutes. Especially because once you place a bid you can ignore that item for 15 minutes to get to the others.

I had a buyer once tell me they were interested in over 100 items in extended bidding. I concede that could get tough.

You see all the people on here complaining about auctions going until all hours. It is rare for us to go much past midnight. We feel what makes our buyers happy will ultimately make our consignors happy. Of course the punchline is there's no way to please everyone. We just have to settle for doing our best.

Thanks for the feedback, but it's just not something we hear nearly as often as we do how much people like being done at a reasonable hour. So, at this point, we're not going to make any changes.

California geography defined
 

Val, one of my favorite examples of California-speak occurred soon after my arrival here in 1978. I was frequently asked if I was from "Back East". Defining "Back East" varied, based on the questioners life history. For a young adult from the San Fernando Valley who had never ventured east of Burbank, if he was asking someone from San Bernardino (75 miles) east of LA where he was from, that someone qualified as being from "Back East", and "Back East" was an accepted response. Don't underestimate "Back East" Val.

It really didn't matter where in the Back East you were from, you were just another migrant.:D

Phil and Frank, thanks for the colloquial geography lessons. I get what you two are saying. I was born in and have lived my entore life in the VA suburbs of DC. When I was a kid, when someone said they were from out West, I assumed they meant west of the Blue Ridge Mountains (which are in VA), or maybe from as far away as West VA.

Thank you for your response Scott. I do like your auctions, and look forward to them more than most. I was especially looking forward to your just concluded one, due to the T207 set break; that is why I'm so passionate about this right now.

I'm just one guy, who's not as young as he used to be, doesn't have the fastest computer service, and likes to have a chance to think through things; but here are my two cents worth:

It seems to me that if you value just getting the auction over with, more than you value striking a balance between giving bidders a fair chance to bid and getting maximum value for your consigners, something is wrong.

What's the point of even having an extended bidding period, if it's only going to be 15 minutes long? In my way of thinking, that does not give bidders enough time to sort through their bids, and determine which ones, if any, they want to raise their bids on.

Why is ending items at 10:15 eastern time, so much better than ending items at 10:30 eastern; especially when there will still be active items beyond that?

You say "It is rare for us to go much past midnight." (I actually like that; I'm not a fan of auctions going past midnight myself). But again, why not make the minimum extended bidding period last a half hour, ending at 10:30 eastern time? You'll still have a low percentage of items going until around midnight, or after.

Steve

+1

I get the lot-by-lot extended bidding, like someone said it mimics a real auction. When you think of it this way the eBay method of just ending at a certain time is strange. What I *DON'T* like is the 3 hour general extended bidding, where one bid on one lot extends the entire auction. This is asinine, has there EVER been an instance where no one bids on anything during that period? So just make the end time the end time, then let each lot extend as needed.

Agree. With lot by lot closing, the people interested in that item can slug it out, without keeping everybody else awake.

There are auctions that do extended bidding on a live clock that moves things along quickly. If no one bids, it's over in 30 seconds. This is also successfully executed in the middle of the day.