[glchen]

I think Steve has a valid point in that the auctions should not have ended on election day. I think that was a mistake by PWCC. Again, PWCC has been in this business a long time, so perhaps they've ended auction on election days in the past, and it hasn't been a problem, but the fact that this election was so close probably moved a lot of folks from looking at ebay auctions to staring at their TV channels or surfing the internet to refresh election voting data. However, I think Brent's response was naïve. By that logic, you can also have major auctions end on Thanksgiving day because most folks are at home not doing much but stuffing themselves with turkey either.

Also, I don't think consignors like Steve could have predicted that their consignment would have ended on election day. I have seen PWCC move their auction start days a little before the auctions were supposed to begin. (Perhaps because they were running a bit behind on processing the incoming consignments or knew that a large consignment was about to arrive.) Of course, once they knew for certain that they didn't like the auction end date, perhaps they could have pushed for Brent to move the listings to the next auction.

Same thing for auctions that end past midnight EST. The problem is that PWCC has too many consignments. What was originally auctions ending over 1-2 weeks is now going on 2-3. I knew that there was something thread where Brent asked different forums what they advise he should do in these cases. Basically, they are trying to space auction close times about a minute apart. However, with so many consignments, they can't all fit in the "sweet spot" for auction close endings. It's similar on Sundays where many auctions end at before 5pm EST. Many consignors have also complained about those ending times.

With consigning items to auction, it is always a roll of the dice. If you can consign the items to a non-ebay auction house, you can always try to specify a start price with the AH at which you could at least be okay with. Val put a tremendously helpful post in this thread (#32) on all of the things that consignors should do and think about. Finally, if you are only looking to sell your items at VCP and you don't have a lot to sell, you should just list it yourself via BIN on ebay at the VCP or a little above. Folks (including myself) use AH's because they are hoping that they will be able get a price significantly above VCP. However with auctions, it is always a roll of the dice. You never know if the folks who want to buy your item are actually looking at your auction.

Finally, on election day, I bid on 10 items (via snipe) on PWCC and I won two. I think I got a decent deal on one item but the other one was near my max bid. The ones I lost went above my max bid, which basically means it was near VCP or above. For example, I wanted the Tabacalera Babe Ruth / Lou Gehrig card that sold on election day in PWCC. This was the same card that Leon had during his auction from Heritage. I basically put a snipe out for the same price the card sold for at Heritage (~1800). However, it sold for a bit more, at $1885, even though it was election day. Therefore, you can say that PWCC still had a higher realized price than a major auction house, and the seller probably netted more because PWCC didn't have a 20% BP. Again, I'm sure Leon was still very happy with how Heritage handled his consignments as some sold for huge prices. However, the point is not all items that sold on election day laid an egg.