REA & auctions

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Posted By: rand

why is REA only once a year? was REA acquired by Mastro? how does REA keep the consignors happy when there is such a long wait before its over? no question the material he gets is fantastic and fun to read about the new discoveries. will there be a time when mastro or other houses slow down the amount of auctions per year with the economy is this shape? at some point you would think the market is to watered down and not enough disposable income to keep them all happy.

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Posted By: Steve Dawson

Personally, I'd love to see more time between auctions. Just in the last 30 days, we've had auctions from Brockelman/Lucky, Huggins/Scott, Lipset, Mastro, Goodwin, Sloate and Lelands. Mastro's running yet another auction next month. Having so many auctions running concurrently makes it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to participate in even 50% of them.

I'd love to see at the most, one auction per month, with each company "owning" a particular month for their auction. That way, we collectors could at least have a chance to breathe between auctions, and not be going crazy trying to sort through so much at the same time.


Steve

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Posted By: MVSNYC

i hear this all the time...too many Mastro Auctions, and too little REA...but after having a conversation with Rob Lifson recently, he shed some light on the subject, and it sounds like for now, it will remain at one annual auction. as he explained, it's takes them almost a full year to collect all of the lots, do research, prepare the copy, print catalogs, etc, etc...

maybe Rob could jump on here and answer your question with more detail...

MS

p.s. with all this said, i am one that DOES wish he had 2 auctions a year.

[Archive]

Posted By: Tom Boblitt

kind of 'merged' with Mastro(net) for a couple/few years back early 2000's. Then they split ways again. That was when Mastro merged or bought out Oregon Trail (later Mastrowest), Ron Oser & REA. Quite the conglomerate..........

Rob is very generous with advances.......as I guess all the houses are lately......and, having consigned before, the once a year wasn't a huge problem for me.

As for will other auctions 'slow down', who knows? I guess if people keep consigning and getting less & less for stuff, they might stop consigning, making auctions smaller or ultimately less auctions overall. OR.......they may HAVE to consign to pay bills down.....who knows. Or they may be more selective in WHAT they consign, knowing some things are in a more depressed mode lately.

Only time will tell...........