REA Clock?

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Posted By: Al Simeone

Im with you Jeff! Im still high on 1 and thinking of trying the other 1 more time! Its only money!!

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Posted By: Seth B.

eh, basketball game is over, I'm going to bed. Two winning bids still in, I'm stunned by how cheap it looks like I'm getting one of these cards. Good night all,

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Posted By: John

Lifson are you a vampire, 2am and still going? Wow not going to lie this really sucks. The last time I was up this late at least there was club music and half naked women.

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Posted By: Joe_G.

Some of the high dollar lots are still seeing lots of action. The Baltimore News Ruth is really taking off, $370k and counting ($434,750 after juice).

Best Regards,
Joe Gonsowski

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

LOL! This is truly insane. If Rob had 3 auctions a year there would be a revolt and a march on his offices...we'd be carrying torches and pitchforks right about now....

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Posted By: John

Lichtman you’re an attorney bill Rob for the hourly rate that will teach him!

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Posted By: Rhett Yeakley

Ruth now at over 500K after the juice.
-Rhett

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Posted By: John

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Posted By: Anthony N.

325am and still going. Insane.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

This is really insane. We're coming up to 12 hours of extended bidding. And there is no clock to even allow one to discern whether any bids have come in.

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Posted By: Kenny Cole

Worse than last year. That "maybe, might, could" quit after 11:00 didn't quite come true

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Posted By: John

End: 5/4/2008 3:30:00 AM EST ????

This is listed are any of you guys seeing this on your lots???

Nevermind...now it says... End: 5/4/2008 3:45:00 AM EST

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Posted By: Kenny Cole

And we bitch as we bid and perpetuate the misery . . .

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Rob seemingly cares more about his customers than any other auction house. So how can this possibly make sense?

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Posted By: Kenny Cole

I now want to be outbid on the big item I'm high on so I can bid on some otehr stuff. Think I can keep it going until 6:00? J/K

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Ken, I actually thought the same thing. Except at some point even Rob has to sleep. Or does he?

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Posted By: Joe_G.

Bidding is closed !

Best Regards,
Joe Gonsowski

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Posted By: John

LOL Kenny, there was a part of me who thought the same thing. Next year we wil have to find the cheapest lot and keep bumping $2 bucks a shot, anybody want to consign Lifson some 88 Topps cards...

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Damn. I wanted to get one more bid in.

Kidding -- really! Now I'm too pumped up to sleep. Perhaps I'll call Leon who I know for a fact has been unconscious for hours.

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Posted By: Ryan Christoff

I just bid and was outbid on a few things within the last 10 minutes and went to bid on some other items and couldn't. Now it says the auction is closed. Did this happen to anyone else? I had about 5 items I was trying to bid higher on.

-Ryan

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Posted By: Kenny Cole

Jeff,

Just pretend it was ebay and go pound down a six-pack.

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Posted By: Anthony S.

It's over!

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

My kids will be up in a few minutes, jumping on my head...so I might as well just stay up and get ready for work. It's Monday, right?

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Posted By: Kenny Cole

Ryan,

I think you must have fallen victim to the "discretionary ending" phenomenon that is unique to this auction.

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Posted By: Kenny Cole

LOL,

You're a lawyer. Does Monday matter?

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Usually no.

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Posted By: John

Could it be finally over here in Philadelphia, can Lifson get the cards out to us tonight, I mean FedEx opens in a few??

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Posted By: Kenny Cole

Same for me. Sigh. Surely there's a better way. Like selling really expensive baseball cards to lawyers and other dumb people. "-)

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Posted By: Anthony S.

does this mean Rob can't stop time indefinitely?

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Posted By: quan

throughout the day during the extended period, i ultimately underbid on 4 lots and winning one...while still managed to squeeze in a workout session and going out to dinner. rob's system works . with the extra time he lets you sit there, simmer, stew until you put in those extra bids. i'm positive i wouldn't have been able to juggle all those lots with the 30-min rule. i did miss out on a couple mastro lots but not spending money is never a bad idea.

give me mastro's method...quick and painless.

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Posted By: barrysloate

My doorbell rang 7:00 this morning and it was the fed ex man with the lot I won in REA...boy, I always knew Rob was fast.

And I even got a full night's sleep!

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Quan -- you're right: the system works as long as you don't live on the east coast!

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Posted By: LetsGoBucs

I went to sleep with two lots and woke up with none....but its a fair auction. I had the opportunity to put higher bids in before sleeping but didn't.

Personally I wonder if the method of ending the auction wouldn't be made a little better by announcing 15 minutes and done once they start to only get a bid or two during a 5 or ten minute period of time - that would then spur all remaining bidders to try to get their bids in. I gave up staying up and while I had put in my bids long before the end of the auction on one of the lots might I have bid again if I were still up? maybe.

I do like to see the end of an auction lot that I'm interested in, but unfortunately the days of going once, going twice gone seem to be gone!!

Overall I think its the best auction out there

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Posted By: Joe D.

one of the best reads I have had in a while.

just dripping with emotion.

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Posted By: Joann

Maybe I'm missing something here? I thought these major auctions had been going until 3 or 4 or 5ish in the morning for years.

The Ruth doubled in price, went up $220K, in the hour between about 1:40 and 2:40 a.m. How could he have ended the auction when a premier lot was taking $10K jumps? I know it's a pain in the rear to have auctions run so late, but in this case I can't see how it was not the best thing for both sellers and buyers - at least the Ruth card suggests that.

And I've never followed one of these to the end - I usually put in a high bid at some point and call it a night - but I thought that this went the same ways as those I have followed. The auction shows an end time of X:30 a.m. You watch until X:28 ... X:29 ... and then at X:30 you either get an Auction Closed message or the time left now updates to X:45 and you start the process over again. I mean ... there was a clock, wasn't there?

I think the only difference in this method is that for the old way the only way to get the Auction Closed was no bids in that 15 minutes. Now Rob reserves the right to put up Auction Closed even if there are bids in that 15 minutes if those bids are minimal. He sent out a great email yesterday explaining how some people would bid on minor, cheap lots to hold the auction open for premium items - trying to outlast everyone else.

So ... coming from someone that was not struggling to stay awake at 3:42 in the morning, I guess I'm not seeing how this is that different from what's been done in the past.

And Dave F made a great call. It would be much much better if there were a way to see what exactly was getting bid on late in the game. Otherwise it is kind of just looking at a screen.

Joann

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Posted By: Joe D.

Joann -

"Maybe I'm missing something here? I thought these major auctions had been going until 3 or 4 or 5ish in the morning for years. "


I think the major difference is.... we are getting older and crankier.

Also, Mastro's new format sort of helps ease that crankiness with a merciful format - and great feedback on each lot (with a countdown clock).
So - we now see what 'could be' at REA.

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Posted By: Joann

OK. I get it. Thanks Joe.

So it's not that they didn't have a clock, exactly. Even in the past you couldn't know at the end of which 15 minute increment you would get the Auction Closed message instead of a new 15 minute clock. So that part of it hasn't changed - just the mechanism behind the scenes as to what shuts it off, a no-bid period or Rob determining not to allow minor bids on off items to extend the entire auction endlessly.

That makes more sense - that it's a preference for the other closing method and not necessarily a departure from past practices or lack of an actual clock.

J

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Posted By: barrysloate

Joe- I started to get cranky way before I got old!

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Posted By: Jay

REA turned into exactly what it is advertised not to be--a contest to see who could stay up the latest. Hopefully some day Rob will go to a system where lots close individually.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I know that it must be torture for you guys to see an auction stay open that late, but I went to bed at midnight and checked some auctions that I was just casually watching and the jump is pretty startling in some of them.

The Knickerbocker photo was sitting at $14,000 when I went to bed and it ended at $50,000. I think the Baltimore Ruth was at $200,000 and it sold for $440,000. The Butter cream Ruth was at $70,000 and ended at $95,000. That's a lot of money still coming in after 1:00 AM EST.

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Posted By: Mark

I think Rob would argue that his "Honest Auti-Bid" system alleviates the need to stay up late. I have seen this in print many times, from REA.

REA stresses that it is a "no worries" system and that your ceiling bid is only executed after another bid has been placed.

I know there are still lots of people who are uncomfortable with leaving "top bids" or ceiling bids (myself included). But I still think that the benefits, and ability to switch lots outweighs the lots closing individually. It is better for consignors, and keeping the auction open enables many from being shutout.

I know the opinions swing both ways on this, and I'm a West Coast person... would be interesting to see how it breaks down- East Coast vs. West!

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Posted By: Joann

Mark,

That's a really good point that I had forgotten about - that Rob frequently says that the Honest AutoBid can be used so you don't have to stay up.

But to respond to Rob on that point, people can't really do that. If you have $50K to spend and are interested in 5 items, you can't leave a $50K max on each item because you might win in a combination that exceeds your $50K budget. If you leave a $10K max on each then you'll probably lose all 5 lots.

A bidder wants to be able to take his $50K and jump from lot to lot, changing the mix among the 5 as some move higher. Using Honest AutoBid doesn't really allow people to not stay up late.

I still think the close-at-once is the most fair to bidders and sellers, and to be honest I like the fact that Rob has reserved the right to close even if there have been one or two minor bids in a 15-minute period (to stop the practice he described via email of a bidder bidding on a minor lot to keep the auction open and try to outlast everyone else on a major lot).

J

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Posted By: Joann

Know what? I've never emailed an auction with a general question before, but I might this time.

I think it would be really interesting to see some kind of time-based information of when money came in. Not lot by lot, but for the whole auction. You'd have the big bump in the first few days, followed by a dramatic taper off until extended time, then a bump at extension with another taper.

Most interesting would be the hour by hour view of the increase in total auction value starting at 4:00 yesterday. Or better yet, look at it in 15 minute increments. I bet that it would show that Rob probably picked a very good time to end - when people had had every opportunity to go strong for what they wanted, but when the incoming bids had trickled to a value that was too low to justify keeping the entire auction open and needlessly frustrating bidders.

I just might email and ask that question.

J

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Posted By: barrysloate

Joann- when I conduct an auction my two busiest days by far are the first and the last. Everything in between is pretty much periodic bidding. I would think every auction follows the same pattern.

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Posted By: Matt

The only reason Rob needs to end it at 4 AM to allow everyone to get their bids in, is because he ended it around the same time last year, so everyone was just waiting until early morning to bid. If he ended last year at 11 PM EST people would get their bids in before then this year and it would end around the same time again. It's not as if someone won the lottery between 11 PM and 4 AM.

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Posted By: Joann

Barry - I would think so too. I'm most interested though in the pattern within the last day - the pattern within the 15 minute time increments starting with 4:00 yesterday. A lot of people here seemed understandably frustrated by the fact that the auction went on a long time - until past 3:30 a.m. But I bet that if we could see the numbers we would find that there was substantial bidding going on during much of that time and that Rob was right to leave it open for that long.

I think I saw somewhere that the auction total was $9 million? So if just the Ruth went up $200K, plus add another $35K for the increased buyers fee on that 200, then the total auction value increased by $255K just on that one lot in about an hour from 1:30 to 2:30 a.m. That's almost a 3% increase in auction value on one lot in one hour. I bet if we could see the increase in all lots for those hours it would be a lot more than 3%.

So how could he close?

J

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Posted By: Joann

Matt,

That's just simply not true. He didn't end it at 4:00 this year to maintain a pattern from ending it at 4:00 last year. In the past it ended when there were no bids in 15 minutes. This year he reserved the right to end it a little earlier rather than allow minor bidding to extend the entire auction. I don't even know what time he ended it last year - I thought it went quite aways into the following day.

These auctions can't just pick a time and end the auction, and the time on the clock is and should be the last - the very last - way to end these auctions. Otherwise you'd have sniping like on ebay, and that's exactly the reasons the big boys can't and won't do it. Whether they end all at once or a lot at a time after no action on that lot, the bottom line is that no one can say they got sniped on a lot. So shooting for a particular ending time, especially to try to be consistent with what you did last year, makes no business sense.

J

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Posted By: Anthony N.

Auction house wish list

1. That all auctions with more than 183 lots adopt Mastro's 30 minute rule, with their new shorter extended bidding.
2. That auction houses stop killing buyers and consigners alike by having ego wars that cause 3 major auctions end with 72 hours of each other
3. That REA have more than 1 auction a year!

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Posted By: Matt

joann - not sure what you disagree with. Many of us bidding last night didn't bid earlier because we knew it would run later - if we had bid earlier, then he could have ended it earlier. We knew it would run later because he ended it later last year. If he guaranteed that the auction would end sometime between 1 and 2 AM I would bet everyone who bid last night would have their bids in by then.

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Posted By: Joann

Matt,

I'm missing what you're saying. It doesn't make sense at all to say that the reason people didn't bid earlier is because they knew it would end later.

The only reason not to bid on something earlier is because you want to make decisions on where to move money around over time as the interplay between your lots unfolds throughout the night.

There is no point in waiting to bid later just for the purpose of waiting to bid later. Then it's like trying to snipe, and REA not being ebay you can't snipe. If Rob or Doug "guaranteed" that an auction would end between 1 and 2 you would have what amounts to sniping.

The simplest example is this: if you only want to bid on one lot, and you have an absolute max in mind for that lot, then it makes no sense not to bid on that lot earlier at your max. Not bidding early because you know it's ending later serves no purpose. The only purpose served by waiting is if you are bidding on more than one lot and you don't want to commit too early before you see how they play out over time.

So there is no point or purpose to waiting, and honestly I don't believe that most people wait to bid just because they know it's staying open.

Joann