Friday, November 25, 2011

Timed Internet Auctions




So, its been a bit...

I've been fairly occupied at work lately - we've run a number of in-person auctions over the past few weeks. I'll start with the largest of them. There was a house in South County, off of Gravois Rd, which was unbelievably loaded with QVC merchandise...a common symptom we see in homes of the elderly. The place was loaded floor to ceiling with Boyd's Bears, Jim Shore figurines, and unopened Strawberry Shortcake dolls from the 1980's. Hundreds of thousands of them, along with dollhouses, doll furniture, and enough Christmas ornaments to choke an entire herd of pachyderms. The sale of the personal property went very well - the weather was beautiful, & we held the majority of the auction beneath the carnival tent in the backyard. About 1/2 way through the sale we split into 2 rings, I moved inside & sold the furniture, then began selling off the contents of the basement, reconvening upstairs to finish the auction.

A couple of weeks later, we sold the house for $123,050. Not bad. The appraised value was around $130,000 - pretty much spot on in the current real estate market.

In between we held a few smaller auctions, including another incarnation of our regular monthly Thursday night auction at the American Legion post.

And while all of this was happening, we have had several online only timed internet auctions running simultaneously. These auctions include a coin auction, an auction stuffed with baseball & sports memorabilia, including autographed items from Babe Ruth & Honus Wagner, as well as Palisades Muppet figurines/action figures, and superhero & star wars action figures & toys. Also, we have a jewelry auction online that is ending tomorrow, a 2nd coin auction that just launched, a doll auction, and a vintage wine auction. On the live simulcast angle, we held a musical equipment auction.

We've also held a couple of benefit auctions, including Art Attack 3, and another one (that I wasn't involved in, Classic ran it) for a children's charity (I can't remember which one, it was a large organization...maybe united way or something...it's not listed on our auctionzip page anymore, I just checked) where part of the attraction was the live painting set to music of 3 large portraits of famous actors/musicians which were then auctioned off. There is a youtube video of it...which I can't seem to locate - I'll edit this post later to include a link. Its worth watching.

And now for some news...and to get back to the reason I titled this post the way I did.

After using some of our recent timed internet auctions as test runs in a fashion, we are going to start holding 2 online-only timed internet comic book auctions via Proxibid every month. The idea is to go with smaller auctions, more often. This will not affect the larger annual Marquee Comic auction - as these are going to feature comics that while still nice and collectible, aren't worth quite the high value as the comics slated for those larger live simulcast events. Instead of numerous comics worth $1,000 or more, these auctions will be featuring grouped lots of books in the $5 to $100 range apiece. Some slightly more valuable comics will be included, as potential draws to the individual sales. The books with the highest estimated fair market values will still be held for the larger event auctions, and the books with the lowest estimated fair market values will be sold the way we've been selling them - at the monthly Thursday night auction, by the box.

My goal is to create 2 complete listings, tallying in at roughly 200 lots each, before I upload the first & start the ball rolling. With each sale lasting 2 weeks, I hope to be able to create a catalog, and upload it in time for there to nearly always be comics selling through our auction house, thus improving our visibility, and leading to future consignments & sales.