Why bother having a 4 week long auction?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

In perusing auctions over the last few months it seems that virtually nothing happens with most lots for weeks on end. There seems to be a flurry of lowball initial bids, then the items sit and rot until the last day when all of the real money comes in. Personally, I'd rather see auctions truncated to 1-week affairs, at most, so that those of us without unlimited card budgets can transact on other items without pending bids hanging over us for a month. The only thing more tedious to sit through is an election cycle.

I would really like to hear from some auctioneers on the subject. Has a shorter auction been tried and rejected for some soumd empirical reason?

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Posted By: Cobby33

Adam-
Good point. I brought this up some time ago and other than getting WAY O/T, I'm not sure there was a definitive answer.

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Posted By: Russ Bright

all I can think is that if it's a month long auction they get more exposure, some of those catalogs are very thick, and they send out e-mails and new people are looking all the time... they probably want the most exposure possible, so at the last minute when everyone has seen the auction they can lal have a bidding frenzy. Not all of us are on ebay daily, so you miss out on some things that are 3 day or buy it now auctions, same thing here, people are always looking and if you have your items for sale longer you will get more people who will potentially want it...


but yes I agree, i would rather not have to wait 4 weeks until i put my bid in knowing i'm going to get killed by someone with deeper pockets than me

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Posted By: Steve

Hi Adam,

Always a pleasure to address a subject with someone as well spoken and intelligent as your self.

As far as Clean Sweep, we run the auctions for 30 days for many reasons:

(1) A week is too short a time for many collectors to read a catalog or go online to peruse a 1,000 lot auction.

(2) A week does not allow time for photocopies to be mailed of items, questions to be answered of a very esoteric nature et al

(3) Many people can simply be on vacation the wrong week, or return the day before or of the auction and that will drastically limit participation

(4) Additional time allows for word of mouth and marketing efforts to bear fruit. It also allows for much more time for internet searches to lead to potential bidders.

(5) We actually get a large number of bids in even week two or three of our auctions. It may sound trite, but not every lot comes down to the last day. For consignors, I still fee extended bidding allows for maximum prices.

(6) Finally, in our case, we mail catalogs 30 days before the auction and need this time due to our wonderful mail system that inevitable involves a few who do not even get it within that time frame. Others will get it right away but for either scenario, we want people to place bids.

Sorry for being so long-winded but wanted to provide a full explanation


Steve

www.csauctions.com

ps our $5 reserve pre-1960 card auction is now live on our site and available as a pdf download on our home page

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Posted By: scott brockelman

Possibly one of the best written replys to any post on the forum recently. We all know the initial action is hot and heavy and the last 12 hours as well, but as Steve pointed out, there are happenings in between. Which as he stated are not neccessarily for the benefit of the bidder, but are geared towards the consignor. How would you like to consign an item, whether it be $1000 or 10000 and not feel like you were getting maximum exposure.

Scott

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Posted By: davidcycleback

It always takes varying amounts of time to get the print catalogs to the desitnations ('Have anyone gotten their Mastro catalog yet? I'm still waiting for mine') ... Also, for $100,000+ lots, many people likely solicit others' opinions before bidding.

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Posted By: James Gallo

Ok so something pops up in and auction that ends at the end of June. You know about the card 30 days ahead of time. In this case the card is affordable but you don't have all the available cash on hand.

Now you have time to raise the cash before the auction ends. IF you lose out on the card then you have cash for the next card/auction.

This is the biggest advantage for me as I don't have a steady paycheck.

I do get tired of long auctions, but I just look through the stuff right away and forget about it for 3 weeks.


James Gallo

Looking for 1915 Cracker Jacks and 1909-11 American Caramel E90-1.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Personally I prefer the 4 week auction so I can look through the catalog pick out the item/s that interest me and then if I really want something badly that I can't afford at the moment I have time to sell something on ebay and collect the money before the auction is over.