First, a brief update. We spent last weekend running an auction in Dixon, MO, where we sold the contents of a rural museum - primarily consisting of vintage and antique farming and household implements (plows, corn planters, and the like, mostly horse-drawn). Additionally, there was some limited militariana, and a few other collectibles, mostly clocks and pocketwatches. Sort of a hodgepodge museum - the kind you're likely to find in a small town when a long time antiquarian collects too much to really call it a private collection, but not enough to open a full-scale museum in a larger town or city.
Secondly, I'll be spending my next weekend up in Wisconsin, teaching (alongside Classic) a class for the Wisconsin Auctioneer's Association, about Google, keyword searching, SEO, IT, and assorted social marketing perspectives. Should be interesting.
And now, back to the second part of the online bidding platform stuff.
This time around, I want to do a more thorough review of my personal favorite online bidding platform, Proxibid.
Proxibid is one of several online bidding platforms, offering auctioneers an improved, global reach with which to market their various wares. As I'm typing this, their frontpage lists 394 webcast auctions (5 currently running) and 136 timed auctions (13 ending today). What does that mean? A webcast auction would be a live simulcast sale - in which bidders are live and onsite, and can also participate through Proxibid's online bidding platform. A timed auction will be more familiar to those not in the auction field, as it is basically very similar to an eBay auction, with a few key distinctions. In a Proxibid timed auction, there is an automated bid extension that can help prevent "sniping", and in the process make the sale more like an actual live auction.
There are many positive things I have to say about Proxibid. In my humble opinion, they have the most elegantly designed bidding application (on the auctioneer's side) that I've used to date. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have some experience selling through iCollector, and I have run one auction with LiveAuctioneers. Both of those are fine sites, which I will review further in later posts. However, out of the three, I prefer Proxibid's Auctioneer application when I'm running a sale. There is a great depth of functionality with their application, enabling the auctioneer clerking a live simulcast sale through Proxibid to correct any of the potential auction de-railing problems that can happen when running a live simulcast auction in a quick enough fashion to keep the ball rolling and the money coming in. Their in-system messaging client is well thought out, with numerous pre-generated messages that can be sent out to those participating and viewing a live sale over the internet. Likewise, you can program your own messages in, and even select a group of commonly used messages into a sort of favorites list, which are then even more readily accessible. This is extremely beneficial for aiding communication between the auction company and the online bidders, and helps clear confusion and solve problems before they get out of hand. Another benefit to their platform app is the ease with which an auctioneer can manipulate the cataloged lots in the auction. At any given time during the sale, you can group lots together on the fly - selecting whether you want to sell them choice, apiece times the money, or all for one price. Similarly, if an error crept into the clerking record, you can at any point, send a previously sold lot back into the ring, and re-sell it to the correct bidder - this is extremely beneficial if you clicked either too fast, or too slow on a button, and awarded the item to someone who didn't actually win it. In most of the other systems I've experienced, correcting a problem such as this can take much longer, and usually involves reconciling the lot after the sale has ended. As it may not be obvious, I'll make a case for why being able to correct this during a live auction is so intensely beneficial. Imagine you have a very valuable lot. A collectible item worth, lets say, $5,000. The auctioneer begins calling for a bid, and the lot creeps up in value, from 2, now 3, now 4 thousand dollars. As the time ticks by, the bids slow, and finally he announces that the lot has sold, on the floor for $4,850. Unfortunately, you did not click properly, and on your online bidding platform, the lot appears to be selling to an internet bidder for $4,700. And you just clicked "Sold". And "Next Lot". Oops. In Proxibid, you can send the lot back to the ring, unsell it, and award it to the floor bidder for the appropriate amount. If this does end up causing consternation from your online bidders, you can offer to show them the video record (because you ARE videotaping your auction, AREN'T YOU!). Likewise, lets say that you have another item, which doesn't meet it's reserve, and the auctioneer is forced to pass...except as soon as he moves on to the next item, a bid comes in from the floor for the previous lot! In proxibid, you can move back to that previous lot, and open the bidding back up. And more often than not, once one person is bidding on an item, another or several others, will join in. And I've definitely had this situation come up, where the item is re-opened (from being passed, not re-opened after being sold, that is a whole other can of worms) where further bids came from online, raising the final sale price even higher. As an auctioneer, I can guarantee that anything (read anything moral, ethical, and legal) that is within my power to do, I will do, to help raise the final sale values of the items I'm selling. That's sort of the job description.
Anyway, this post has kind of gotten elephantine, so I'll continue next time, with a review of iCollector.
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