Phew. Just Phew. It has been a crazy couple of weeks. I'm going to have a rather lengthy post this time, detailing as much as I can of what I've been up to for that time.
So first off, we went to Chicago for Wizard World. Set up shop in the middle of the trade hall...directly across from the ComicLink booth. For those of you just joining us, back in 2009 when we held our first comic auction, one of the head honchos over at ComicLink called us up & was...less than friendly. We aren't the best of friends.
That being said, the show was great. We handed out close to 1,000 fliers for the August auction, talked to hundreds & hundreds of comic collectors, saw some cool costumes, & bought some cool stuff. I snagged a GD+/VG- copy of Amazing Spider Man #14 for myself, & we met some cool people. Additionally, I hung out with some of the comic collecting industry's bigwigs, including a nice dinner out at Gibson's with Steve Borack (Consignment Director for Heritage), Jerry Stephan (Grader/Consignment Director for Heritage), Doug Schmell (Pedigree Comics), Jeff Williams, and a few other high end dealers/collectors. All weekend long we attracted attention to the booth with a looping slideshow showing some of our world record prices, and on Sunday we gave away an iPad 2 to one of the nearly 300 people who registered for the giveaway.
Also on Sunday, I made my rounds around the convention show floor, and managed to pick up 2 boxes of CGC graded comics on consignment from 2 of the dealers. When we left the show on Sunday afternoon, I took shotgun in the Honda Fit & began madly typing, getting some of the new consignments added into the auction listing. This as it turns out, became problematic, because we were tired from the weekend, and I wasn't helping Classic navigate. The gps we use (its built into our phones) started saying "Make a u-turn" about 2 1/2 hours into the drive, and Classic told me to turn it off. That was a mistake. 3 hours later, we were wondering why we weren't in St. Louis. As it turns out, we had missed a turn, and ended up on highway 74. We drove 4 hours in the wrong direction, and ended up in the outskirts of Indianapolis. We got a room for the night, and then started fresh in the morning.
The next morning we made our way back to St. Louis, and then things happened very quickly - we were trying to make up some time (as we had initially planned on making it back to St. Louis the previous evening & starting from St. Louis that morning). It was already nearly noon, and we wanted to try to make it all the way across Missouri & Kansas that day. So we quickly unloaded the display unit from the car, and I began scanning the 10 CGC graded comics we were adding to the auction in the office. I finished the scans, and copied them onto a thumb drive, then proceeded to re-load the car. By this time, my sister had returned from stopping by her apartment to pick up some new clothes for the second leg of our trip. We jumped back in the car, and sped off for Colorado. That evening, we made it as far as Goodland Kansas, just a hop, skip, & a jump from the border.
The next day we finished the drive out to Pagosa Springs, CO. There, we met up with Ed & Sheila Berger, as well as Tina, Lisa, & Julia (who had left for Pagosa the day after Classic, Ali, & I had left for Chicago). We spent the next two days relaxing in a pair of condos in Pagosa - while dropping off the Berger's vintage wine (that they had purchased from a recent auction we held) & picking up nearly $100,000 worth of gold & jewelry that the Bergers were consigning to a future auction.
After a couple of days in Pagosa (which is a very nice place to visit for a couple of days, but after a few days you've probably done everything worth doing in the town due to its size) we continued on towards Rifle, CO - where we would be helping Si Harbottle & Cindy Schillig (both CAI classmates of Classic & I) hold an auction for the contents of Si's father's estate. We arrived in the early evening, and spent a couple of hours setting up the auction & testing the tech - this was to be the first auction I had clerked live using Auctionzip Live. I had gone through the training session the week before the Chicago trip, and as I've mentioned before, I'm fairly familiar with online bidding applications in general, so I wasn't too worried about the auction itself. My main problem was fixing the internet access at the location of the auction. The sale was being held on a fairgrounds in Rifle - one typically used to hold Rodeos. The items were being displayed in what amounted to a garage area beneath some large concrete bleachers erected at the fairgrounds.
The auction in Rifle went fine, albeit a bit hectic. It would have been helpful to have one or two more staff members - specifically a dedicated clerk with experience clerking a live auction using the AuctionFlex console. As it happened, I ended up giving instructions on how to clerk a live auction to Si Harbottle's niece about 5 minutes prior to the auction - good thing she was a quick study. After I finished running the live clerking on Auctionzip Live, I had to take over clerking a large portion of the auction on AuctionFlex.
The morning after the auction in Rifle, we began the trip home. That day was my father's birthday, so we took the trip slowly, and stopped to hang out in Vail. The original plan was to visit Hanging Lake, but it was completely packed with tourists, so we skipped it & headed to Vail. We bought some lift tickets, and had lunch at the top of the mountain - great scenery & great food. After lunch we walked around (I would say hiked, but it wasn't long enough of a walk to really justify using the word "hike") at the top of the mountain, and then headed back down to Vail. We did a bit of window shopping, then got back into the cars & headed towards Denver. Here is something you might not know. Every Sunday, eastbound highway 70 turns into a parking lot from right around the Eisenhower tunnel all the way to Denver. After moving forwards about 15 mph tops for the better part of an hour & a half, we exited the highway & took back roads all the way to Idaho Springs, where we stopped & had dinner at "Hilldaddy's Wildfire Restaurant" which sounds like a terrible terrible joke, but actually has very good food.
After dinner, we continued on, eventually crashing for the night in Limon, CO - right at the border to Kansas. The next day - the next long, long day, we finished the drive home.
Upon returning to St. Louis, I worked like a fiend, making sure the final preparations for the comic auction were done. While on the trip out west, I had added all those who had registered for the iPad2 in Chicago to the email list - meanwhile Classic used ZapData to purchase a large email list of comic shop owners & dealers. Combining these two lists with our previous customer base, we now have a fairly impressive list of people who really like vintage comic books. We took the list, sent out an email campaign using Constant Contact, upped our Google Adwords comic campaign, and posted our updates through Facebook & Twitter. All while driving through the mountains. Back in St. Louis, I reorganized the books into lot order, and got them prepared for the auction.
The morning of the preview, we loaded up the truck & the honda fit, and drove to the location. We got everything set up in a very short amount of time, and realized we had about 5 lots left to add (non-comic books with the exception of a copy of Omega the Unknown). This was comic related paraphernalia - a couple of Batman wall lights, a lithograph signed by Bob Kane, and a few other small pieces. The copy of Omega the Unknown is a joke item - we end every comic auction with a copy from that series, and Classic always buys it.
The sale went off without a hitch. There were no discrepancies on the descriptions of the items between the two platforms. There were pictures for every item by auction day. The tech didn't have any noticeable hiccups (there were a couple of times the video stopped broadcasting for Auctionzip Live, but that was due to the usb port on that laptop being loose, and once we figured it out, we taped the cord to the computer & no more problem). Not only did we not experience any major issues during the sale, we also managed to reconcile the auctions in record time across both online platforms & through AuctionFlex as well. We ended up with about $133,445 in gross total sales, with 60% of the items selling through Proxibid, about 20% to 30% selling through Auctionzip Live, and the rest selling to either in-house bidders or absentee bidders who had left prebids over the phone or by email. We spent less money putting this sale together than either of the previous two comic auctions, had better sales numbers & sold more comics than the previous sale from last September, and will enjoy a wider profit margin even with a lower seller commission structure. All in all, a great success.
The day after the comic auction, I was back in the field, setting up our next auction (for the following day I might add!) - a large estate auction in St. Charles, MO. This sale had a little bit of everything - lots of household goodies, collectibles, antiques, furniture, a Lexus (albeit an older model with a lot of miles), and last but not least - a really really nice motor home. I don't remember the sales total offhand - but I do remember that the motor home sold for more than $60,000 by itself, so it wasn't a small auction (in fact it took ALLLLL day). As an added bonus, I purchased a really nice leather recliner for my gaming room.
Following that, we had a few days where we were back in the office - we being Lisa & I - Classic & Tina were out setting up the next auction & signing new contracts for future sales. I was working on accounting for the expenses & proceeds of the comic auction, while Lisa began billing the bidders from the internet platforms & the absentee bids. Then, we finally had a weekend off. 2 blissful days where we were either sleeping off the marathon or lounging on a couch watching a Karate Kid marathon on cable.
The day after our much deserved weekend, we were back in the field, running a grueling 10+hour estate auction. We showed up onsite at around 7 am, began the sale at 10, and didn't finish selling until about 6 pm. Hoarder house in Uplands Park, MO - which if you've never heard of, is a tiny little postage stamp sized town next to Normandy. Great sale, but LOOOOOOONG. The lady who lived in the house had collected pretty much everything Hallmark ever made that was designed to be displayed on a pine tree. And then everything Gorham designed for Christmas. And anything else you can think of for Christmas decor. Plus a lot of vintage toys, and some very nice Federal style furniture - including an exquisite replica of a couch that is in the White House.
Long story short - we ended up doing more than a quarter of a million dollars in gross total sales in less than 2 weeks. Not bad, but it's no wonder I feel like a dead man.
Alright, I'm signing off on this short book I just wrote. I'll have another posting up shortly, but I'm not sure what the topic will be just yet. Probably something about packing/shipping, as that is what will comprise the next week & a half of my life.
