Coverage

Still haven't had much of a chance to catch my breath since the comic book auction, and it's been over half a month. The phones have been ringing off the hook. Channel 2 tv here in St. Louis covered part of the event, and their footage was picked up by CNN - who put it on their front page for a little while. The story written by the Post Dispatch was picked up by the Associated Press, and they spread it all over the midwest. We now have people as far away as New Jersey talking with us about consigning comic books for our next comic auction. Since the auction I've personally picked up over 2,500 more comic books (some of which are in bad condition, some of which aren't super-collectible) for the next 2 comic book auctions. Aside from all that, we held another regular household auction a couple of days ago, and we have another one scheduled for the 21st of this month. On the 30th of this month we will have a front page full color article published in Antique Weekly's National section, and I just heard tonight that The Learning Channel (TLC) on cable TV is planning on filming a segment about the auction for one of their shows. I've got a meeting tomorrow with a guy about consigning more comics to auction, including another copy of both X-Men #1 and Avengers #1 - both of which were in the top 3 prices realized in the last auction.

$1M +

Hey, this is one of the first days I've had off since the big comic book auction this past weekend. Over the course of two days we set numerous world records for individual books, including the CGC 8.0 Amazing Fantasy #15. The total from the sale is over $1,001,000.00. We should have the final numbers, including the buyer's premium, tax, etc. as well as the total number of world records, within a few days.

Lisa has been hired on full time as the company secretary, and there is renewed talk of finding a permanent office/warehouse/auction hall. So, all things considered, it was an awesome weekend.

We're planning on running another comic book auction next year, so we are going to have to start beating the bushes and looking for new comic consignments for that sale.

Coo Coo...

...For comic books - we have apparently located some folks who are. The auction is still about 13-14 days away, and we've already got over $80,000 in prebids on iCollector. So apparently we are doing something right.

There is still a lot of work to do - we are missing a bunch of scans that will need to be uploaded, not just to iCollector, but to Proxibid and to the google photo albums we've been using for the website as well. There are still some individual lots that need more description added - mostly stuff like the overstreet price guide prices for the books, and the CGC census information for that particular issue. But the textual info is pretty much finished...that just leaves the huge task of creating and printing the actual physical catalog to be sold to the bidders planning on actually attending the live auction at the Ameristar. So, guess who gets to do that? You get 3 guesses, first 2 don't count.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining - its just a big load of work.

We've got the last auction we are going to do before the comics tomorrow - a restaurant in Maryland Heights. Hopefully it will be a decent sale, but business liquidations can be weird sometimes, and I personally haven't been involved on the setup for this one at all, so I honestly have like, no clue what will actually be sold tomorrow, aside from the obvious fact that it involves a bunch of kitchen equipment.

Lots of news

I've been a bit busy of late - Just got back from the hospital about a week ago with my new daughter, Julia Petra Weiman. She was born on Sept. 17th, 8 lbs, 11 oz. We spent a couple of nights in the hospital, came home about 3 days after checking in, and then after about 2 days at home went right back to the emergency room to get her infant jaundice cleared up. She's fine, Lisa is fine, and I am healing from a minor scooter accident (as it turns out, 2 wheeled vehicles, regardless whether they are motorized or not, do NOT like sharp turns on gravel).

In summation, baby is fine, mommy is fine, scooter is fine (I finally got around to fixing the turn signal today) and I'm getting better.

That's all you get for today.

Comic News

Okay, I've been holding off on writing on here for a couple of days, because I was waiting for some things to settle in and get decided on before we could go public about them. We finally have a date set and a location selected for the November comic book auction. The higher value books have been graded by the CGC, and we are in the process of getting them updated on our website. Soon we'll have the catalog done, and then we can really hit the media.

So, without further ado, the big, expensive comic book auction, will be taking place on November 1st and 2nd, at the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles MO. There will be a 1 day preview on October 31st. It is open to the public, and there will be a costume contest on the 31st - the person in the best costume will receive a voucher for $100.00 off at the comic auction.

With the location selected, and the date set, now all we have to do is fully prepare for the auction. This means that I'm going to be very busy designing advertising, calling potential bidders, leaving messages on comic collector's internet forums and message boards, meeting with potential bidders at places like Archon, and generally running around like a nerdy chicken with its head cut off. Fun times. Fun times...

House Auctions

We had another house auction today. This one sold for $89,900 to a nice couple who are planning on using it as a real estate investment - buy it now, while the market is down, and either rent it or sell in a few years when things have recovered some more. This is the second house we've sold in a week. This was also the second time we had tried to auction off this piece of property. The first time we tried to sell it, the minimum was unpublished, meaning that we (the auction company) knew how much the seller was willing to sell it for, but we weren't allowed to make that knowledge public. When you aren't allowed to tell someone what your actual sale price is, it makes them hesitant to bid on the property - not knowing how much it will actually cost prevents some people from being willing to participate at all. Think of it this way - say hypothetically that you wanted to buy a new car. You go to the lot, and find one you like, but when you start to ask how much the car is (so you can begin negotiating the price down) the dealer starts asking you how much you would be willing to pay for it. This would be fine, if you were talking with them about buying a couch, or something smaller. But when you are dealing with a major investment (like a car, a house, etc) its usually better for the buyer to know what they are getting into. And if you have the attention of the buyers (like at an auction, when you want to have as many potential buyers as possible), the more open the discussion is, the more likely you are to be able to actually move the property, whether said property is real estate or roller skates. The more information you have available on a piece of real estate, the easier it will be to convince a potential bidder that the property in question is worth their time to investigate, and possibly to purchase.

Recently, we've sold about 3 houses in the past month or so. The first one was in Festus, MO. It had 3 acres, a mother-in-law apartment in the basement, a 2 car garage, and was very private - the house sat back behind its sub-division, with a quarter mile long gravel driveway, and was surrounded by trees and bushes. That property was sold with no reserve - meaning that whatever the high bid was, that was the final selling price. Basically, when a bidder hears the words "no-reserve" or "absolute auction", a knowledgeable bidder realizes that if no one else registers to bid on that property, it can be had for an extremely reasonable price, because regardless of the lack of competition, the property will absolutely sell. In turn, absolute auctions are among the most volatile, because the lack of a reserve that must be met results typically in high levels of competition, which brings a better value. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are unpublished minimums - which was the case when we first tried to sell the property we sold today. In those cases, there is a firm minimum, but beyond the seller and the auctioneer, the general bidding public is unaware of what the minimum required for purchase is. The middle ground, and the way that the majority of our real estate sales have taken place, is a published minimum, where the seller sets a price that they find acceptable for their property, the auctioneer advertises the sale with that price made public for the bidders to know how much is required to purchase the property, and then the real estate is sold to the highest bidder at or above that minimum purchase price. All three methods are viable, but all three methods have times when they are better for a particular piece of real estate as opposed to the other two methods.

Another Dollar...

...$159,900 individual dollars today, to be exact. The house auction I mentioned yesterday went splendidly. We had a total of 4 registered bidders, with around 10 people actually in attendance. The final bid came in at $145,400, with a 10% buyers premium. The opening bid we received was $75,000, and the bidding came down to two of the bidders ranging from five thousand dollar increments down to $100 dollar bids at the close. I'm going to see about getting the video of the auction uploaded to youtube and putting a link on here in a future post.

Take that, housing market and crazy economy!

Another day...

...another bunch of comics. We finished inventory on the comics for the auction yesterday, and today we began to lay out some further plans for the auction, including possible locations.

So far, the best candidate seems to be the Ameristar casino in St. Charles - but there's nothing written in stone yet. Its a nice place though, and I would be lying if I said I wouldn't like to hold the auction there. However, the costs have to be figured in, and we need to run comparisons between various possible locations before we agree to anything. Aside from that, we've got a real estate auction tomorrow for a house in Rockhill, MO, near Manchester Blvd. The house is the one pictured above.

Alright, business talk aside, personal talk begins. I think I'm going to try my hand at assembling a bassinet today. Or maybe not, but it's gonna have to happen soon. I've been trying to get all the baby stuff - the stroller, the car seat, the crib, etc. assembled at the rate of one every other day or so, but it's been a looooong week. I think there is still one shower left to go (Lisa somehow managed to end with like, four separate baby showers), and I'm running out of room in my house. It's a good thing that children are so small when they are born, or there wouldn't be any room left in here for Julia when she shows up. I've got to clear some of this stuff out.

I get paid large amounts to play with comic books...

...take that everyone I hated in High School.

No, seriously - we've got an auction coming up at Mound City that has like, 3,000+ vintage comic books, and for the past two months, whenever I haven't been setting up an auction, running an auction, or holding an open house for some real estate we were selling, I've been spending every minute possible at work preparing for the comic book auction.

The auction is going to be ridiculous. There are individual issues of comics, that retail for more than my house costs. No, I'm not exaggerating. You want proof? Here is the record price for Amazing Fantasy #15 - for those of you who aren't comic book geeks, that is the first appearance of Spider-Man.

We've got the first Silver Age Green Lantern, the first issue of The Avengers, the first appearance of the Justice League of America, the first issue of The X-Men, and many, many others. This auction is going to kick crazy amounts of ass. Crazy, crazy, craaaaaazy amounts of ass.

As soon as we have the location and date nailed down, you'll hear about it.

Hello World

...And to begin with, a stupid old programmer's joke that I've shamelessly stolen from my father.

Hi. This is a trial run for, well, this.

I'm Rob. My facebook page is here if you don't already know me, and want to know more about me, that is a good place to start.

This blog is being set up as a complementary piece for my soon (I hope) to be launched website for my company, Lotus Marketing LLC. It is a side project for me, as I'm already gainfully employed (and overworked as it is) at my regular full time job as Marketing Director for Mound City Collectibles & Auctions LLC. A link to their site can be found here, and their Auctionzip page is here. So if you find yourself needing some fine home furnishings, household goods, collectibles, antiques, vehicles, real estate, restaurant equipment, or pretty much anything else you can think of, we've either already sold it, or we will be soon. You would be doing yourself a disservice to not check the Mound City Auctions site frequently.

Alright, spiel aside, new spiel ahead - the Lotus Marketing website will be up soon - exactly how soon is something I can't promise - mainly because of the workload from Mound City and the fact that my wife is 9 months pregnant. So, yeah, I'm kind of retarded for trying to get a website off the ground, run my normal workload at my main job, have a kid, and still try to maintain sanity and a social life. Go me.

Oh...before I forget - this blog will not be strictly advertising or work related, so if I come across like I'm selling something ALL THE TIME - well, deal with it, that's sort of how I come across in the real world. I usually am.

p.s. If you somehow stumbled across this page due to your affection for either freestyle rap, lotus automobiles, lotus flowers, lotus yoga, freestyle ssx snowboarding games, or any number of other things I haven't bothered googling that have nothing to do with what this blog will actually feature, you have my apologies, but I won't be covering those things.

You've been warned.