Era of auction without auction catalog

[Gary Dunaier]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I don't need a catalog to tell me who Babe Ruth was or that Lou Gehrig caught a terrible disease and retired young, gave a moving speech, and then died 2 years later.

This was always a pet peeve of mine. I figure that if someone's going to spend big bucks on a card, or autograph or memorabilia of a certain player they already know who he is and don't need to read a biography, as if it's someone they've never heard of before. "Babe Ruth? Never heard of him. Let's see... sultan of swat... home run king... larger than life... Sounds like an interesting guy. Okay, I'll bid on it..."

Tell me more about the item itself - condition, provenance, background of the piece. That's what we want to know.

[mrreality68]

We will have these catalogs for a while. It over time they will go away
Just a matter of how long it will take
But remember as these go away and the auction houses save printing and shipping money do not expect them to pass the savings to their sellers and buyers.
The fees will not change and they will take that for their profit

[Eric72]

1. For me, flipping through a printed catalog is a much faster, more efficient process.
2. When I receive catalogs, my number of bids (and amounts) tend to be noticeably higher.
3. After using the catalog to zero in on items, I then login and add them to my watchlist.

Most importantly, catalogs don't get lost in a sea of emails/banner ads/Facebook posts/other online content. They sit on my desk until I have a game plan.

[doug.goodman]

Originally Posted by Eric72

1. For me, flipping through a printed catalog is a much faster, more efficient process.
2. When I receive catalogs, my number of bids (and amounts) tend to be noticeably higher.
3. After using the catalog to zero in on items, I then login and add them to my watchlist.

Most importantly, catalogs don't get lost in a sea of emails/banner ads/Facebook posts/other online content. They sit on my desk until I have a game plan.

Yep

[chriskim]

Originally Posted by mrreality68

We will have these catalogs for a while. It over time they will go away
Just a matter of how long it will take
But remember as these go away and the auction houses save printing and shipping money do not expect them to pass the savings to their sellers and buyers.
The fees will not change and they will take that for their profit

yup... buyer's penalty would just get higher and higher. No way that they would lower the penalty because they no longer needed to print catalogs in the future.

[Fred]

Just curious -

Does ANYBODY know how much a print run of REA catalogs costs to produce and mail? How many catalogs does an AH like REA create and mail out?

Does anybody have any inside knowledge to other AH catalog distribution numbers and costs?

[BRoberts]

Originally Posted by Fred

Just curious -

Does ANYBODY know how much a print run of REA catalogs costs to produce and mail? How many catalogs does an AH like REA create and mail out?

Brian Dwyer probably knows.

[Orioles1954]

[QUOTE=Fred;2174229]

Does anybody have any inside knowledge to other AH catalog distribution numbers and costs?

Edited for clarification: It varies for H&S based on auction cycle, but still in the thousands.

[MVSNYC]

Denny, I have some of those old REA catalogs from the mid-late 90's...so many lots in those early catalogs would be museum pieces today, or even carry their own auctions (like Gehrig's [actual] uniform he wore during his luckiest man speech, in that catalog you posted...or the FIVE Cobb/Cobb backs in that auction. Insane stuff!). I love thumbing thru the old catalogs and shaking my head at the prices realized.

[spacktrack]

Originally Posted by Fred

Just curious -

Does ANYBODY know how much a print run of REA catalogs costs to produce and mail? How many catalogs does an AH like REA create and mail out?

Does anybody have any inside knowledge to other AH catalog distribution numbers and costs?

Originally Posted by Orioles1954

We are around 3,000 this auction cycle.

To be clear, Orioles1954 does not work for REA, but if you’re scrolling through these posts quickly, you might think he does based on the last response and since there’s no name or company link in his posts. Newer readers may not know who he is. REA considers information like mailing lists and related items, as I imagine many businesses would, to be proprietary. We do, however, have a long history of sending out a large number of free catalogs to anyone interested.

Brian

[botport]

I gave my REA catalog from the most recent auction to a friend today. I just recently found out he collects Clemente as he was his favorite player growing up. He loved the catalog. This guy could chase down lots that I wouldn't even be able to place an opening bid on. I wanted him to see how good the offerings are and hopefully sometime down the line, find something that he has been searching for. To me, I couldn't really do that very effectively without the catalog. Ya, I could have said go to www whatever and maybe he goes there or maybe he doesn't. High resolution scans are definitely great, but something in hand has merit also in my opinion. I love the catalogs, hope they never go away and also hope I am never removed from the mailing lists.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by spacktrack

To be clear, Orioles1954 does not work for REA, but if you’re scrolling through these posts quickly, you might think he does based on the last response and since there’s no name or company link in his posts. Newer readers may not know who he is. REA considers information like mailing lists and related items, as I imagine many businesses would, to be proprietary. We do, however, have a long history of sending out a large number of free catalogs to anyone interested.

Brian

He is James Feagin (hi James) and works for Huggins and Scott...
.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by spacktrack

To be clear, Orioles1954 does not work for REA, but if you’re scrolling through these posts quickly, you might think he does based on the last response and since there’s no name or company link in his posts. Newer readers may not know who he is. REA considers information like mailing lists and related items, as I imagine many businesses would, to be proprietary. We do, however, have a long history of sending out a large number of free catalogs to anyone interested.

Brian

Actually there was, in post #31 he mentions specifically he's with Huggins & Scott and has a link, etc. If you had actually looked through and read all the posts you would have seen that of course. And there were two questions in the post he responded to, and he was responding to the second question, not the first one directed at your firm. Since Oriole1954 had already posted multiple times in this thread, and fully identified himself as to who he was affiliated with, I can fully understand why he may not have felt it necessary to repeatedly state over and over in each and every post in this thread who he worked with.

For the record, both AHs are great and do a wonderful job in the services provided to the collecting community. And no, I don't work for either of them.