High end card auctions + ebay. Would you participate?

[Fred]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I would personally have no interest in it.

To the part I made bold. There is a auction section in the BST area that every listing starts at $1. So not everything in the BST section is overpriced.

That's probably my favorite section in the BST. It's nice because there aren't items fresh from an AH auction that are being pedaled for 30% (or more) of the final hammer price from the AH.

Originally Posted by G1911

Two of eBay’s big positives are the ease of buying, and the large amount of items available. I don’t see how it would be advantageous to abandon what they’ve done right for a new format that just mimics tons of smaller businesses. It’s not like there is not enough ways to buy cards. I don’t get what the point would be. eBay except I have to stay up bidding live and with a small curated selection of items offers me no gains.

I wasn't thinking ebay would abandon their format, that would be totally crazy. I was thinking more along the lines of a premium monthly auction to draw more interest to their business and attract bidders that normally avoid ebay because of it's reputation.

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

For some reason I’m remembering that EBay actually tried something like this years ago(like maybe 20 years ago or so), and it was a complete and utter failure.

They lack the hands on expertise to actually get something like this off the ground. It’s all about numbers crunching with them, and not much else.

That is so true. They would have to really think it out and figure an angle to draw interest to something like this. It is an auction site so why not experiment to see how to draw in more bidders and have a little fun in the process.

Originally Posted by Jewish-collector

Define "high end".

How about items that would normally sell for $1K or more, but these days, that seems to be just about anything that people really want. Maybe they could "theme" the auctions and have all T206s and then have another with E cards. I'm just thinking out loud here.

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

It was a live auction platform in tandem with EBay auctions. Auction houses would sign up and take bids both through eBay and on-site. So yeah, it would have extended bidding controlled by the auction house.

I believe similar to what LiveAuctioneers does now, but using the EBay platform instead.

Turned into a huge clusterfudge.

I remember attending a live auction in the Albany, NY area that was also accepting EBay bids….a large boxing collection was involved including a ton of original Dana photos. Nearly every winning bid was an in person bid…..and I will say, I got a ton of bargains in the process. So did another boxing guy I knew (who I was secretly hoping wouldn’t show ) who showed up. Stuff went for way lower than if they had just run straight EBay auctions.

The program ended up creating a lot of confusion and not really working out for anyone involved outside of a few savvy/lucky bidders.

I couldn't imagine other AHs being involved. If they were involved then they'd have to abide by the extended bidding and closing rules set forth by ebay.

The beauty is the ending format. Extended bidding to continue for 15 minutes and then not end until there is no bidding on the lot for 15 minutes. The lots would close independently. To me, that's one of the things I really dislike about the typical AHs, most close all the lots at one time. If the lots closed independently, then that would push people to put up or shut up sooner and end the carziness where people on the east coast are up to all hours of the AM.

Originally Posted by raulus

I guess I don’t follow the premise.

There are plenty of high end cards that have been auctioned on eBay using a low starting bid. Prepandemic, it wasn’t uncommon to see cards in the 5 and even low 6 figure range get auctioned. While some of those auctions have gone away due to PWCC moving off the platform, and more and more inventory moving to the AHs, there is certainly a strong history of high end stuff being auctioned on eBay using their standard format.

If I had to guess, any number of us participated in those auctions, and probably won plenty.

But maybe there’s some reason why those past auctions don’t count towards your thought exercise?

This wouldn't be the standard format. This would be lots closing independently after 15 minutes of no bids. That's the big difference. With the current ebay format, people use snipe services. What this does is allow people to reconsider their bids because what happens if the snipe misses it because of a "lag" in network service or the bidder thinks "damn, I should have bid a little more". That gives the bidder the opportunity to rethink and rebid because the closing is after 15 minutes of NO bids.


I'd like to see it. Perhaps it would "inspire" AHs to modify their closings so that people aren't waiting all night for the auction to close. A 15 minute no bid limit for the closing would seem reasonable to me. If someone really wants it, they'll bid on it. I'm going to guess that someone will say, "yeah, but if they get outbid on somethings in the auction, the late closing allows them to bid on other things". I get that, but this auction format would say "crap or get off the pot". If you really want it, bid on it.


I like our variety of AHs we have, but a little innovation and competition is always healthy. Maybe somethings change for the positive. Again, just thinking out loud and wondering if people would prefer an independent lot closing format that isn't a fixed time, but based on the loss of bidding interest which leads to the lot closing.