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.

As the Marathon draws to a close

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.

Twas the night before Wizard World...

aaand the clock has officially run out on my time to prepare the auction before we head to Chicago. Wizard World Chicago officially opens to the public tomorrow afternoon, and I'm going to be leaving from St. Louis to drive up there around 7AM tomorrow. The August comic auction is up & running on both Proxibid & Auctionzip Live - I ran through the training for Auctionzip Live today - our fliers are printed, our car is packed (except for my clothes & stuff, that happens tomorrow morning), our display booth is packed, the video we will be running on the tv we are bringing should be done (Classic was working on it today) and out of 612 lots, we are down to about 15 total that don't have a picture up for one reason or another - I'll have to take care of them when we get back from Colorado. Oh, I don't think I mentioned that yet...the morning after we get back from Chicago, we are driving to Pagosa Springs, CO in order to meet up with Tina, Lisa, & Julia, and then we are going up to Glenwood Springs to help Si Harbottle (an auctioneer from Texas we are friends with from CAI) perform an auction for his father's estate. Because we are crazy, that's why. Immediately after we return from that trip, I'll have a couple of days to relax & unwind before our comic auction...and if you believed that I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I want to sell to you. We should be getting home from all this craziness on the 23rd, and then I have 2 days to finish final preparations for the August comic auction...so...hooray! Who needs sleep, right?

In unrelated news, we spent last weekend down at the Lake of the Ozarks...but not on vacation. There is a new History channel Auction reality show called "Sold!" being filmed there, at Bryant Auctions, who we know through the NAA. I was contacted a couple of months ago by Chris Longly, the Deputy Executive Director of the NAA, on behalf of Hannes Combest, CEO of the NAA, about possibly being on the show. After some more talks with various people from the production company, Evident Entertainment, we agreed to bring an item down for Bryant Auctions to sell. I'm not going to say much more, but I'll be sure to let everyone know when the episode airs. It was a lot of fun, and that's really about all I can say about it for now.

Comic Book Auction Part 3: The Bookening

So, after several 10 hour days & voluntary overtime in abundance, our 3rd Annual Comic Auction is uploaded to both Proxibid & Auctionzip Live. There are still a bunch of pictures that haven't been uploaded - due to the fact that I have probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 comics out of the 6,000+ in the auction that I still have yet to photograph, renumber, & upload. So that's what I've been working on all day.

Ran into my first couple of issues with Auctionzip Live today/over the past weekend. Nothing major, just some minor inconveniences - their tech support team (while very helpful) was not available over the weekend, and I wasn't sure I could change the location of the auction after I had published the lots & made the sale available for the public to register & leave bids. In Auctionzip Live, when you create an auction, you (like in any other online platform) have to select a location where the sale is being held. In their system, this is managed via a dropdown menu system of pre-programmed auction locations. This list, is generated by their in-house staff, so in order to add a new location, you have to send it to them via email. This leads me to infer that the majority of their clientele are auctionhouses with fixed locations, who don't do a lot of running & gunning with their sales. Unfortunately, my company does not fall into the "we have our own building" camp - we either hold our auctions online only (rarely), at our clients home (often), or we rent a facility for a weekend (also often) as is the case with Augusts comic auction. So, because I wasn't sure whether or not I could change the location post publish, and because I couldn't change the location manually, I had to wait until Monday morning to be able to change the location & publish the lots.

Lo and behold, once I had published, there were, well...phantom images that somehow crept into my photo upload. Now this one, I'm still trying to puzzle out. I literally have not a clue how these extra bonus images found their way into my photo upload. Here is what happened. I was uploading the images for day 2 of the auction. The contents of this sale are ONLY COMIC BOOKS & NOTHING ELSE. As such, their images are saved in a few folders on my work laptop, as well as on our office server. And there aren't a whole lot of pictures that aren't pertaining directly to the auction in those folders...I know because I had to look through each photo as I was renumbering them before uploading. I also know the folders were clear, because I had already uploaded both days photos to the auction listings on Proxibid. So, I ran the upload, carefully making sure as I did that I only uploaded photos that verified (there is a verification process that their java applet runs to ensure that the photos match by number to lots already posted in the auction listing). After verification, I uploaded them to day 2. Once this was done, I went in to select the cover photo for the auction. When you do this in Auctionzip Live, it shows you what I can only assume are all of the photos you just uploaded. Without numbers. So I'm looking through this list of photos, and its like this: comic, group of comics, comic, CGC comic, group of comics, gun, sword, comic, comic, group of comics, gun barrel, sword hilt...wait, what?

I look back through the folders - no pictures of guns, or swords. I call up the tech support line (they were both nice & helpful, but no idea what happened either) and we decide to pull the auction down & I'll just re-upload everything (and this time, make sure I don't add any gun or sword pictures).

We pull the auction down. I re-upload everything...checking EVERY FOLDER THAT I'M USING FOR SWORDS AND OR GUNS. After carefully checking everything, I'm confidant that there are in fact, no sword or gun photos being sent to their server, & I proceed with the photo upload. I go to select a cover lot, and...

PICTURES OF SWORDS AND GUNS IN ADDITION TO MY PICTURES OF SPIDER MAN. ARRGHH.

At this point, I'm baffled (and not a little bit frustrated). I know for a fact that I didn't upload any pictures of swords or guns. I know that they couldn't have been left up from before, because we completely pulled down the entire sale listing, & I recreated the entire auction listing from the beginning.

It can only be one thing...

GHOST PIRATES!

In all seriousness, its probably just some crazy crap left in my IE and Firefox cache memory from previous uploads to Auctionzip from our recent Civil War auction. Except we uploaded those files to Auctionzip, not to Auctionzip Live. Except that I cleared my cache. Except that I checked every picture before uploading it.

In summation, today my job apparently turned into the plot from an episode of Scooby Doo. Tomorrow I will find & unmask the ghost pirate who corrupted my upload...and he will turn out to be old man Jenkins, who just wanted people to leave his auction alone. Because there was actually buried treasure hidden in the server room.

MSPAINT: For when it's too early in the morning to do it right.
I'll bust out bigger guns when I'm not doing this for a lame Scooby Doo reference.

Trade Shows

In a little over a week, I'll be in Chicago at Wizard World Chicago, where for the first time since we started selling comic books, Mound City Auctions will be setting up a booth. I'm really, really looking forward to this - for the past 2 years, attending the Chicago comic con has been a big highlight of my summer months.

As of this evening, our August comic auction catalog is finally finished - all the written description of the lots is managed, and all I have left to do to fully realize the sale (aside from the advertising & the auction itself) is to take pictures & upload everything. The upload of the text will happen tomorrow morning, hopefully by the time noon rolls around I'll have the text for both days up on Auctionzip, and I'll have the catalog (at least the text based portion) uploaded onto the two platforms we are using for the sale - Proxibid & Auctionzip Live.

The next step after that is the advertising. With the completion of the text for the catalog, and the final upload process accomplished, we can create an adwords campaign targeted to the sale, using long tail search terms lifted directly from the catalog itself. This in turn will lead to increased traffic on the comic landing page, which in turn will direct interested parties to either of the two bidding platforms. The traditional media portion will include fliers for the trade show, signage & banners for the trade show, and a raffle we will hold at the comic convention, with the prize of an iPad 2. The raffle form will be used as a collection point for future bidders, with an included acceptance of advertising from us for future events & requests for consignments.

As far as the convention goes (and to get to the point of the title of this update) we are beginning what will hopefully be a long, successful showing at various trade shows. Our display was delivered today - a 10 foot sectional piece of curving backdrop with velcro/carpet backing, magnetic attachment points, lighting, and a small matching table. Our plan is to have a variety of banner style signage attached to the backdrop, and to have a flatscreen tv displayed on the table showing a looping video advertising our services.

The planning portion of the process for this upcoming comic auction is nearly done - and with not a moment to spare. I've been pulling 10 to 12 hour days, and that is probably going to keep up until the convention starts.

Oh well......at least this year I'll (hopefully) be able to get Patrick Stewart's autograph.

Online Bidding Platforms - Part 3

We held our 2 day Civil War auction last weekend, hosting online bidding through both Proxibid & LiveAuctioneers. It was interesting. This time, as opposed to the previous trail run of LiveAuctioneers, there was a longer period of time in which the sale was made available to the public on LiveAuctioneers. As a result, at the time of the auction, we had nearly the same number of registered bidders on both platforms, and I've got a comparison of how the sales broke down between the two platforms, which went head to head in a pretty fair test imho.

Platform ][ Total # of Lots ][ Lots Sold ][ Total Sales ][ Avg $ Per Lot ][ Total % Lots Sold ]
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Proxibid ][ 557 ][ 155 ][ $14,725.00 ][ $95.00 ][ 27.82% ]
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LiveAuctioneers ][ 557 ][ 128 ][ $12,495.00 ][ $97.61 ][ 22.98% ]

*Sorry for the terrible chart, I'll probably edit this later & put a graphic in its place or something

So, there were more lots sold on Proxibid, but for a slightly lower average price. All in all, both platforms competed pretty evenly. Aha, but how many people registered on each?

Proxibid - 191
LiveAuctioneers - 249

...hmmm...what can we infer from this data. More people registered & probably viewed the auction on LiveAuctioneers (which supports the idea of that platforms primary strength being its marketing division), but there was a MUCH more substantial followthrough on the participants from Proxibid. With 58 fewer bidders, Proxibid managed to sell 27 more lots, albeit for a slightly lower average price.

This data so far is supporting my thoughts on the two platforms fairly well. Basically, in my opinion, a large portion of the value added to any particular auction by LiveAuctioneers, is their marketing. They appear to do a bang up job of driving viewers to a sale posted on their site, attracting attention & making people want to register. However, Proxibid seems to be getting more targeted & focused buyers funneled into the auction - less people who are more likely to bid & win lots.

With that in mind, its time to go further into detail about my likes & dislikes of the LiveAuctioneers application & service.

1. The Auctioneer application
There are a lot of things I have to say about this. I'm going to start with a few big ones. On LiveAuctioneers, the only way to know which bidder bought any particular item (as an auctioneer) is to visit their website, log in as an auctioneer, and look at an End of Auction report. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. Primarily, because of the possibility of disputes during a live auction. When an auctioneer says "sold" it is the completion of a verbal contract, which is legally binding. Typically, in an auction, when a particular item is sold, the auctioneer immediately follows up with the bidders paddle number or bidder number, confirming that the item was purchased by that bidder. This is rather obvious when in a public setting during a live auction, and prevents misunderstandings & disputes by allowing them to be resolved at the point at which they occur. With LiveAuctioneers, it is not possible for the person clerking the live sale on the computer to report back to the auctioneer the bidder's number who purchased the item at the time the item was sold. There is a computer record of the items sale, but speaking from personal experience, I always prefer to have that information publicly stated during the time the sale price is fixed at the fall of the hammer. This way it is not only shared to the public attending the sale in person, but it is also picked up by any recording methods (we tend to audiotape, videotape, or both all auctions we hold). Additionally, this leads to transparency for the general public, further assuring those who attend in person that the bids being relayed to the auctioneer from the online clerk are real & legitimate, and that the sale is not being rigged & there are no games being played with the money or the merchandise. The lack of this information being provided through the auctioneer application is a MAJOR failing of the LiveAuctioneers software in my humble opinion.

There are many other less serious issues with the application. I can state for a fact that the application does work, but there is room for improvement - many small details, which if implemented, will improve the efficiency of the software, making the job of running the application easier for the clerk, and increasing its efficacy at transmitting the relevant data of the active bid, the asking price, & the sale of items back & forth from the auctioneer to the online participants & vice versa. For one thing, as a direct improvement, there seem to be some issues with certain bid increments. For example - if the current bid is $25, and the bid increment is set to $10, the next asking price should be $35. In LiveAuctioneers, using that exact scenario results in an asking price of $30 - apparently the LiveAuctioneers app does not like numbers that end in $5. This can be problematic when trying to maintain speed & accuracy during a live auction. During the sale last weekend, at one point we were selling nearly 90 lots an hour. Trying to keep up with the shifting bid increments is hard enough when software does exactly what you expect it to, but when you input $10 increments, and suddenly the software is asking for $5 increments, you can quickly lose pace & fall behind the current live bid, causing a potential loss of a bid from an interested party on the other side of the computer screen.

All in all, I like the LiveAuctioneers platform. It does deliver a large number of interested participants, and the software is functional, if without a certain elegance & ease of function. With some minor tweaks primarily aimed at decreasing keystrokes & increasing efficiency, LiveAuctioneers could be a great platform. I'm hoping it continues to improve.

Online Bidding Platforms - Part 2

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.

Online Bidding Platforms - Part 1

This is a post I've been wanting to do for a while, but I've been wanting to do it right. In order to do so, I'm going to break it up into multiple posts, for better clarity.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the industry term, a Live Simulcast auction, is an auction in which bidding occurs through an online portal alongside of either live onsite/in-house bidding, or multiple online portal sites. As an example, think of a local auctioneer, holding a sale in their building. There may be 75 or even 300+ bidders there on location (depending on the auction & auctioneer). At that sale, imagine a ringperson accepting phone bids on a call-in line. He or she can accept a single call at a time, taking a single bid at a time from each call. In order to take multiple bids on a telephone at once, you would have to have a large number of employees & a bank of phones. Not.Cost.Effective. The modern equivalent of phone bidding, is online bidding. There are a whole host of sites which let auction companies market their cataloged sales to an interested public, typically involving a flat per auction fee to the auctioneer, along with a percentage of the gross sales total from that auction. There are also other fees which can become involved, typically for extra marketing efforts for the benefit of a particular auction on behalf of the online bidding platform. With the addition of an online bidding platform, the same auctioneer who had live competition on his lotted items from 75-300 people, can now effectively spread his marketing on those items to ANYONE IN THE WORLD WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION. This is a no-brainer. If you have the technical expertise to create a spreadsheet, and can successfully manage your data, you can vastly increase competition, and therefore prices realized, on the items you are selling.

At Mound City Auctions, we've used 3 different online bidding platforms for live simulcast auctions & for online only timed auctions - Proxibid, iCollector, and LiveAuctioneers. Each has its merits, and each its flaws. Additionally, there are several other live online or timed internet only bidding applications to choose from. What my goal over the next several posts is, is to review the three that I've personally used, as well as take a look at others used in the industry.

Rental venues

Another day, another auction. Today we had our test run of a new rental facility (hence the update title). We have plans to make use of the American Legion post in Overland, MO for a regular monthly auction, and today we held our first sale* there *(first indoor sale, immediately following the Good Friday tornadoes, we relocated items from a house that were were scheduled to sell the contents of to the Legion post's outdoor pavilion in order to hold the sale, as we couldn't hold one in the tornado damaged neighborhood).

The sale went well, but not without some of the normal lurches & bumps that holding an auction in a new location can bring. For example, we could have used one more staffer to help conduct the sale, it would have made the load-in of the items we auctioned MUCH easier considering the triple digit heat index. Additionally, some revamps of our storage of auction items (particularly our webcams, which we use to display the current lot being sold on a projector) couldn't hurt. All that being said, the sale went fine, although there was some tension amongst the crew due to the heat and the missing webcam (which we found, with plenty of time to spare).

Back to the original point. Rental venues. For a small family owned auction firm (which many auction companies are) it can be very problematic to hold offsite auctions. If you don't have the capitol to invest in a full fledged auction house/hall, you can find yourself on the short end of the stick when it comes to several key aspects of the auction industry - warehousing of items & space to actually hold an auction. As a company, we've found several ways of managing these difficulties, while retaining a low overhead & still pulling off massively successful auctions.

Finding a good space to rent to hold an occasional multi-consignor sale is paramount. My recommendation is to go outside of the typical venues. While a hotel or conference center ballroom will most definitely provide a lush spot for your bidders, it can put quite a pinch on your company's pocketbook. Other options may be available, ranging from veteran's association halls, social club/organization buildings, churches, schools (private or parochial, typically), or, for those who are truly thinking outside the box, an open field and a fireworks tent of decent size. For a fraction of the outlay of buying or leasing a building, you can outright purchase a sizable tent, which can be erected with a minimum of effort in most homeowner's lawns to add space to on-location auctions, or can be used for multi-consignor sales with a little planning. Adding sides to a tent, as well as heaters or fans, can increase the amount of time during the year you can see reasonable usage. We have held auctions in the past during snowstorms with 10 degree (Fahrenheit) temps while inside the tent its a balmy 40 and virtually no wind.

Status report

Okay, so I've not been keeping this thing updated AT ALL, and that should probably change. I'm going to try and post on here at least once a week, and see if I can keep that up.

So, here is what has been going down at Mound City Auctions, and with me in general.

lessee...last update was in November of 2009. Wow...just wow. We've held a second comic book auction, last September. Broke another 98 or so world records at that one, and solved our shipping problems with comics - actually had a lot of positive feedback from our bidders. We currently have over 27,000 comics on consignment, and I'm going to be sending off roughly 350 comics to the Certified Guarantee Corporation (CGC) tomorrow for grading. Those books, and around 5,000 others, will be sold at our upcoming August 26, 27, & 28th auction here in St. Louis. So far, that is the only listing for that sale - and it only has the partial inventory list for the comics. The catalog is being processed - I still have to organize the comics into lot order (the lots are basically created, but don't have estimated grades on the raw comics yet, which I'm doing as I attach lot stickers to the bags & boards). Additionally, we will be selling the first 8,000 or so lower end Bronze, Copper, and Modern comics in an auction taking place on June 9th at the same location as the August comic auction, the American Legion post on Midland Blvd in Overland, MO. We've started to use that location as an auction hall, in order to keep our overhead low rather than buy or lease a building.

Our first Civil War Auction *(picture above is of some of the many, many swords from that auction) is coming up on July 22, 23, & 24th, also at the American Legion post. And our first Wine Auction is happening this Sunday - and is being live simulcast on both Proxibid and LiveAuctioneers. Which brings me to something I can actually speak a bit longer on and have something other than plugs in this post. Yay!

Live simulcast auctions are one thing - basically you have a live audience, like a normal auction setting - people sitting in chairs or standing around a tent, or a house, holding bid cards & generally having a good time. In addition to that, you have (if you are in a hall) a guy sitting on a computer and receiving bids from online participants, who typically are viewing information on the current lot on their home computers, as well as watching a live video and audio feed showing the auctioneer and the crowd at the live auction. You can also run remote, basically have the guy on the computer back at the office, and have him relaying bids through a headset to another guy on a phone at the auction site - this works well if you are doing the sale on location, and the auctioneer and crowd of onsite bidders have to be mobile to participate in the auction. We have been doing online auctions for a couple of years now, with pretty solid success. There are several online bidding platforms, and so far, my personal favorite is Proxibid - they have a combination of a knowledgeable staff, solid agents/representatives, good programming, and an easy to use application for both bidders and for auctioneers. However, it isn't perfect, and there are still some issues that tend to crop up from time to time - not that these are insurmountable, or completely the fault of Proxibid. For example, if you loose internet access - or have another technical issue (computer freezes, or something) you are forced to either continue the auction using the pre-bids (absentee bids) left from the online bidders until you can get the application online again, or you can switch to non-lotted items (if you have any). If you have any familiarity with auctions, you will know that anything which breaks the rhythm of the auctioneer's chant - even something as simple as taking a drink of water at the wrong time - can steal away the auction's momentum, which takes time to recover from. If you are planning on running a live simulcast auction, be ABSOLUTELY sure to check and double check ALL your technical gear - make sure your computer is running properly, make sure your internet connection isn't buggy, etc.

Running a live simulcast auction on multiple bidding platforms doesn't just double the effort, it goes exponential. The November 2009 comic auction was live simulcast on both Proxibid and iCollector. There is already a lot of effort & time that goes into crafting a catalog for a single online bidding platform - and typically the format of the data which one platform requires for uploading a completed catalog is completely different from that of another platform - additionally you must perform "idiot checks" to make sure you didn't leave a typo in that switches lot order on anything - otherwise you'll have one platform bidding on lot 95 while the other platform is bidding on lot 96, for example. This can cause massive issues. So caution is most definitely proscribed.

All those warnings aside - running an auction with a solid catalog of valuable items, on multiple online bidding platforms, in concurrence with a live onsite auction, can be very, very good for you, your bidders, and your clients. It helps widen the pool of available bidders, increasing the chance for people not previously exposed to your client's property to the property in order to bid & win it, increasing the competitive price of the goods in question, and in the end, creating more value for your client, and for your company. If you have the technical prowess & fortitude to make it happen, it can pay off.

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.