New Self-Service Auction Venture

[Matt]

As some of you know, Leon and I have been working on a self-service auction site for collectibles with low fees, proper organization, (better) fraud/reprint monitoring, and a number of other improvements. At this point, while we know there are some issues to still be worked out with the site, in order to flesh out some of the remaining issues, we want to open it up for a few weeks and allow some real, albeit limited, usage. As such, we're looking for about 10 people who would each agree to sell between 3 and 10 items on our site at no charge (no listing fees, or final value fees, of any kind) and we'll open the site up for everyone to bid during this testing run. You can use reserves, etc...if need be, to protect yourself from getting too low of an ending price. We realize it needs to be safe for everyone and don't want anyone to get upset for any reason during this test run. In return, any seller who sells items during this trial period will get a credit for a free "front page featured" listing on our site once it goes live.

We're not yet on our production server, so it is possible an issue might arise which interrupts the auction (currently the site is using the same hosting package as this forum does, which has been pretty solid). Of course, if that happens, we'll work with you to resolve it in a way you are comfortable with. We will reserve the right to nullify any auction or sale, at any point, in order to protect sellers/bidders in the case of software or other glitches. Otherwise the auctions will be live and real, and are expected to be completed in a professional and legal manner. If you are interested in being one of these first sellers, please email either myself or Leon. Once we have the sellers setup, we'll post another thread (with the site URL) letting everyone else know they can register and bid.

While Leon and I certainly are hoping this turns into a successful business venture, we also hope that this serves as a safer, friendlier and cheaper place for our hobby to transact than some of the current alternatives. Therefore, we're excited to receive whatever constructive feedback you can provide to help make it a success for all of us.

Thanks so much for the great feedback everyone! We've got enough sellers at this point. We will email all of you in the next day or two with specifics and then follow that a little later with a forum post letting everyone know about registration and bidding.