Why the extended bidding?

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

Hi Scott, has any live auction you've held or taken part in last several days?

It's to promote the sales price, and having the whole auction open until there arent any bids is the epitome of stupidity. Buyers put up with it, until they dont.

To answer your question yes. Also I have been to several auctions with 3 different auctioneers working at the same time. If you have thousands of lots live you have no choice.

Of course these aren't in the sports genre, but I don't think you could get card guys to sit through a 12 hour auction and they would be pissed at missing out on what the other two auctioneers were selling simultaneously in a sale of that nature.

I come from a live auction background. When I was still doing live auctions 500 was our absolute limit as that took about 5 hours from beginning of auction until end of check out, and even then we would start to lose our crowd.

People say "to make the consignors and the auction more money" as if that wasn't the purpose of live auctions in the first place. Again the reason online auctions run the way they do is to mimic a live auction more closely. The purpose of the auction format was always to make consignors and the auction company more money.

Finally I couldn't agree more with the complaint about an entire auction staying open until no item has a bid. THAT is NOT anything to do with how auctions have run pre-internet. I can't imagine being on lot 300 of a live auction and someone yelling out I bid $450 on lot 32!