And now for something completely different...

There has been some recent controversy on the Auctioneers and Auction Technology groups on Facebook. Much of this has been related to the Slide 4 debacle involving Proxibid's shifting market philosophy/business approach.

Recently, David Fuller, the developer of a Facebook social networking game called Auction Plums, has been making posts in defense of Proxibid on those two forums. In these posts, Fuller claimed to have held more than 10,000 auctions in 2011. This is an absurd claim. By stating he has held this number of auctions in one fiscal year, Fuller is claiming that his social networking game Auction Plums - a game featuring a virtual auction environment in which players bid on virtual representations of real world items with an in-game fictional currency - count as auctions he's held in 2011. This claim is both facetious and disingenuous.

The common understanding by a layperson, is that an auction is an event held at a specific time and place, where physical items, real estate, or intellectual property are sold, with the sale price being negotiated by an auctioneer, who is acting as an agent for the seller in order to effect the transfer of property to the buyer, or bidder. Whether this sale takes place on the internet as a timed auction, in person, or a combination of the two does not matter - the relevant items being that there is a transfer of real legal tender in exchange for some commodity - typically this commodity is a physical item. The "sale" of graphical representations of items in a virtual environment, purchased using a virtual currency, is quite simply not the same as a traditional auction taking place in the real world OR over the internet using an online bidding platform. Auction Plums is in Alpha testing. This is incomplete software, being tested on the general public via Facebook. It is not an online bidding platform - no real physical items or real commodities are exchanged via purchases made through Auction Plums - aside from the potential for participants to reload their energy and BidderBux (BBX) through the exchange of YET ANOTHER VIRTUAL CURRENCY, Facebook Credits (to be fair, when I clicked on the in-game purchase button to see if I could purchase BBX, a pop up window opened where it was possible to purchase them directly with a credit card as opposed to purchasing Facebook Credits and THEN exchanging them for BBX).

As a direct response to these claims, I decided to perform a full review of Auction Plums.
To begin with, I'm going to state my credentials, and why you should listen to what I have to say as it relates to both video games, as well as auctions.
I'm a professional Auctioneer, licensed in the state of Missouri. I'm a member of the National Auctioneers Association (NAA), and I hold the following NAA designations - Certified Auctioneer Institute (CAI), Certified Estate Specialist (CES). Additionally, I graduated from the World Wide College of Auctioneering in 2011. I'm the Comic Manager and Marketing Manager for Mound City Auctions, and have been involved in the business and industry starting part time 12 years ago, and full time beginning in 2005. I have performed hundreds of auctions - both in person and online - during that time. I've sold millions of dollars of real merchandise, actual commodities that people can own, not 1's and 0's on a server.
I bought my first video game console in 1989, when I was 6 years old, using my own allowance, and my second system in 1993, with money I raised myself by walking around my neighborhood and offering to paint people's home addresses on their curbs for $5 apiece. I am a gamer. I currently own more than 10 video game consoles including an NES, SNES, N64, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Playstation,
Playstation 2, GameCube, XBox, Xbox 360 (all of which I use regularly). I custom built my own gaming PC - it has more than 1 TB of hard disk space, 12 gigabytes of RAM, an intel core i7 quad core processor, an nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti graphics card with 1 GB of dedicated video RAM, dual 20" HD monitors, a snazzy clear sided case, and a Corsair Liquid Cooling system.

My shit is hardcore.

I've been playing video games since I was able to pick up a controller. I own hundreds of them. As far as other "geek" cred goes, I'm a comic book collector and a bit of a comic book expert - having set more than 600 world records on the high sale prices of vintage comic books. I placed 50th in the world during the 2007 Magic: The Gathering Legacy World Championship Tournament. I have spent more than $2,000 on building a couple of Warhammer 40,000 army (click the link, its basically like grown men playing with sci-fi themed army men that you have to build and paint yourself - yes, it IS that sad. But fun). I have a 4 year long running discussion/argument going with one of my best friends about the nature of timeline theory as it applies to the Terminator movie franchise - this same friend and I starting writing a plot treatment for a 5th Terminator movie about a year ago. I spend my vacations attending various comic book and gaming conventions across the Midwest. I've memorized entire seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I have a level 36 Cyborg Bounty Hunter on Star Wars: The Old Republic. I had (I've since quit playing) a level 80 Gnome Rogue on World of Warcraft. I have played, still play, and am intimately familiar with more video games, board games, and role playing games than you are probably aware even exist. I am a geek's geek, a nerd's nerd.

In summation: I'm qualified to fully review this game on both its merits as a video game, as well as its relationship to the Auction industry.

Auction Plums is a social networking game, in the same vein as Zynga's Farmville, or many of the other games whose main form of marketing themselves is in the continuous stream of "achievement" posts they pump out onto the Facebook timelines of those who play them, drowning your Facebook home page in constant reminders that Suzy wants you to come see the sheep at her Farm in Farmville. These are the types of games that have only recently come to prominence in the realm of video games, being simplistic in their graphical requirements, and offering little in the way of depth or immersion. These games are basically the late 2000's and 2010's version of Solitaire or Minesweeper - contradictory by nature as they exist primarily as a means to kill time while you are already killing time by browsing Facebook.

That being said, I feel I should reiterate that Auction Plums is still in Alpha - there are features that are not yet usable in the game, which could improve it once implemented. I'll cover this in a bit.
The main attraction to games of this nature, is that they exist in nearly every iteration as a form of a neverending, but simplistic and easy grind - you end up repeating the same actions ad infinitum, generating a small cumulative return (making your farm look nicer, accumulating points, etc.). The better variants of this genre tend to exhibit a puzzle nature, or other form of simple yet addictive gameplay elements - for example, Angry Birds is a VERY simple game, combining the concept of gravity based combat originally appearing in games as far back as 1962's Spacewar! with a semi destructible environment, and a very simple narrative of the "rescue the kidnapped X" genre. Simple games, simply put, are not bad things in and of themselves - they have the added benefit of a shallow learning curve, granting them a certain ease of access to the public. However, in order for a game of this type to work best, it needs to have an addictive quality to it's gameplay - something which Auction Plums is sorely lacking. Stated succinctly, the entirety of the "game" portion of Auction Plums revolves around visiting the virtual Auction House, selecting an item from the catalog, and participating in a virtual auction for that item, where instead of having a pre-recording auction chant, the current bid is simply displayed on the screen in the form of a modified speech bubble emanating from the games auctioneer, Betty Botter. During the bidding process, resources appear on the screen in the form of clickable rewards - BidderBux, Energy, and Plums - the BidderBux are your currency for paying for the items, the energy is expended every time you enter a bid, and the plums are basically a graphical representation of experience points you collect in order to progress to the next level...a concept that this game wholly refuses to flush out in any kind of sensible manner (more on that in a minute). So far, this all seems fine...until you play one or two of the lots through, and realize that by bidding on the lot, you end up recouping a large amount of BBX. This is a serious departure from how ANY real life auction happens - typically when you purchase an item at an auction as a bidder, you spend money, you don't experience a net gain in your wallet (I feel like we'd probably have a few more regular bidders at our auctions if by bidding on an item, $20 bills just kind of appeared out of thin air, waiting to be scooped up from the floor). If this is meant to be an example of you purchasing these items & then re-selling them via an alternate venue at a profit, then that's fine...but it clearly isn't the case as the game itself shows, all the items you purchase are stored at your estate, where they are showcased in various buildings (house, barn, shed, etc.). As your in game character accumulates more and more value in the items they purchase through the Plum Junction auction house, your estate gets nicer and nicer looking - your trailer home becomes a doublewide for example. If you are keeping all the items you purchase, what exactly is the BBX that springs into existence at the end of the sale of EVERY item supposed to represent? I would strongly recommend that the Beta version of this game needs to include a couple of venues for reselling items your character has purchased in the auction house, in order to better showcase what an auction in the real world is actually like.
More importantly, after playing through a few lots in the auction house, it will become readily apparent that the truly important resource is Energy - required to place every bid, and the only way to replenish it is to either spend real money in the real world on more of it, wait for it to recharge slowly over time, or to recruit new players from your friends list on Facebook. This kind of tactic, recruiting the player to spread the game in exchange for an in-game reward, is a staple of modern browser based games, and in a large part is responsible for the barrage of spamming non-players receive when they log into their Facebook accounts. Not that this has been a major problem for Auction Plums as of yet, I'm speaking here in general terms about this genre of game.
A little note about the plums and leveling. For those of you reading this after looking at the post I put up on the Auctioneer forum on Facebook (most of you reading this, I expect) I'm assuming you don't have a good amount of familiarity with modern gaming. The concept of levels and leveling I'm referring to here is NOT the traditional "Mario beat level 1, on to level 2" type of thing. This doesn't involve a change of scenery in the game, or a new location being unlocked, or anything of that nature. In this instance, the "levels" appear to be intended to be used in much the same way as levels are used in a role playing game - increasing your level makes your character stronger in some fashion (typically through increased health, increased damage, increased resources, or new abilities). This is poorly implemented in Auction Plums. What this game needs is a clearer sense of growth potential for these levels, in order to grant motivation to its players to keep playing the game (aside from getting out of that doublewide and into a ranch). Benchmarks, or unlockable abilities (for example, quicker regeneration time on energy, or maybe a once per day usable ability to "sneak" a bid in so the other computer generated auction participants don't know who bid, causing them to be confused and delaying their response time to bid themselves by a few seconds). Little improvements in this area would go a long way toward making this into an actual game, as opposed to the current snoozefest it is.

The main screen of the game shows the Plum Junction town square...er...town circle? Whatever. In it there are 4 buildings - the Auction House, the Proxibid Auction Showcase (coming soon!), the Town Hall (coming soon!), and Price Finders (coming soon!). As you've probably already figured out, only the Auction Hall works. Since there isn't any written information provided about these other three game locations in the games help file, I'm going to have to make educated guesses as to what they will eventually become once this game moves from Alpha to Beta to Actually a Damn Game that People will Play.

The Proxibid Auction Showcase sounds to me as if it will likely be a portal showing current and recent listings of items sold in real auctions on Proxibid.

Town Hall seems likely to be a place to meet with and interact with the avatars of other people playing Auction Plums.

Price Finders seems like it will function as a search engine for real world auction results for real world auctions...which would be somewhat impressive if the people at Real Plums can bring it to fruition (something I don't see as being very likely - the real world resources necessary to make this a fully fleshed out real time database of prices realized means that it will have to by its very nature either have an extremely limited scope on what it holds pricing information on, or it will become an ENORMOUS time sink for the poor sap tasked with maintaining accurate records for anything and everything sold at auction anywhere all the time).

Last, and least, I want to touch on the graphical qualities of this game. As a Facebook browser based game, the graphics are pretty much exactly what you would and should expect - cartoony, cutesy, super-deformed characters with giant heads. Nothing much to look at, but nothing much to complain about either. I guess my biggest issue is that I think Betty Botters' gavel-rimmed eyeglasses are kind of stupid, but whatever, that's just my opinion. Not a huge problem. The only other thing I can think of that needs to be included, is the ability to customize your own avatars appearance in the game. 'Nuff said.

The thing, as an Auctioneer, that I think we need to focus on in relation to this game, is that it will by its very nature, act as many people's first interaction with the Auction Industry - much in the same way as Auction based reality tv shows. It is not necessarily up to the task. I feel that with some refinement, and addition of some of the things I mentioned in the review, it would do a much better job of both simulating a true virtual auction environment, as well as stimulating players into actually wanting to continue playing for more than 5 minutes. Auction Plums is far from the worst game ever but it could use some upgrading.

Biting the hand that feeds you...

For those of you who've followed this blog in the past, read what I've had to say about the various online bidding platforms, or heard me speak about them, you know that I've been a pretty staunch supporter of Proxibid in the past - I like their bidding platform, I like the people who work there. I like a lot of things about them.

Unfortunately, they have decided to shift their business strategy going forward, and have made it pretty clear that they want to start competing directly with Auctioneers for business. Look at the chart above, and it should be pretty obvious that going forward, Proxibid intends to begin seeking direct consignments and bring property to the market directly, bypassing the auction companies and auctioneers who have helped them build their business thus far.

Additionally, there have been a few other business decisions relating to their advertising, and their domain hosting that have raised serious questions about their future relationships with Auctioneers. Specifically, they purchased a series of domain names, including www.proxibidsucks.com, which they did not park, but used to direct traffic to their home page. The reason this is a bad thing, is that if you had used Proxibid's services as an auction company, your company name would show up in a google search along with the word "sucks" with a link leading to Proxibid's website (e.g. if you had an auction company named "Joe's Auctions" and had used Proxibid, and performed a google search for "Joe's Auctions Sucks" you would find a link to Proxibid's website). I have a serious problem with this. This is a potentially damaging form of advertising to the clientele that Proxibid's success is dependent upon. (Note: Since I began writing this blog entry, Proxibid has parked their Proxibidsucks.com domain, effectively ending this problem)

Proxibid is a tool. I don't mean that in the colloquial sense, I mean it literally. They exist to perform a series of tasks and functions for auctioneers and bidders - to provide a virtual marketplace where bidders and auctioneers can meet in the middle and exchange money for goods. In the past, they have performed this function well. However, their stated goal is to insert themselves into the mix, bypassing the auction companies who they have previously worked with, and using the marketplace they have built to sell items themselves. In doing so, they will be moving from a position of partnership with the auctioneers who have worked with them all along, into one of direct competition. I want to be clear on this point - I'm all for competition. That being said, if hypothetically, you owned a local grocery store or pharmacy, and were buying your stock from a wholesaler, who then opened up a direct distribution wholesale retail store next door to you, you might start looking for a new wholesale company to buy from, right? Obviously that is an exaggeration of what Proxibid is doing, but I'm sure you get my drift.

I've been reading through what I've seen being posted amongst my fellow auctioneers on Facebook - there is an ongoing conversation regarding Proxibid's business decisions, as well as other viable bidding platforms. The subject of an NAA maintained bidding platform has been brought up, and I think it is one worth further discussion.
Lets say that the NAA does decide to pursue this course of action. The immediate problem is the massive funding and support that building a new platform from the ground up would require - I would lay out the problems, but Brandon Harker (the owner of AuctionFlex) has already done so better than I ever could. So I will shamelessly copy portions of his explanation here

"Building systems that scale to handle thousands of simultaneous bidders for hundreds of auctioneers is very complex, requires significant investment, and can't be accomplished in 3 months, much less 3 days. A system that can handle all the NAA members would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get off the ground and would cost hundreds of thousands annually to maintain."

Here is a little more of his wisdom


"When I say building out systems, this is what I mean: 1. Custom software built from the ground up with the auction-industry as its target, offering some combination of absentee bidding, timed auctions, and/or live broadcasting. Timed auctions should include capabilities like like soft-close, grouped soft-close, staggered ending, etc.
2. Software built to be load-balanced across racks of servers. This allows server maintenance to be done without bringing down the service. This allows servers to fail without bringing down the service.
3. Redundant everything: Redundant fiber backbones, redundant routers, redundant load balancers, redundant firewalls, redundant web servers, redundant database servers, redundant switches, redundant power. A system designed such that no single hardware failure will bring down the service.
4. Database mirroring or clustering so that bids are automatically backed up in real time to multiple database servers. If a database server fails, no problem, no bids are lost.
5. Full-time I.T. staff with physical access to collocation facility for real-time 24/7 monitoring/notification and immediate response to any issues.
If an auctioneer is looking for a provider, they should ensure that their provider has made these investments in their systems (we have).
By contrast, a smaller provider is probably going to have some or all of the issues I describe below:
1. Canned scripts: Anybody can take one of the free auction website scripts like phpauction.net, put it on an inexpensive virtual host, and claim to offer an auction website. Total cost: $50-$100 a month. Most of these scripts won't work well as an online auction solution because they all tend to be very item-based (like eBay). In contrast, our industry treats timed auctions somewhat like a traditional auction. The auction has lots and these lots close over the course of a few hours. On an ebay-style website lots close 24/7 with no relation to one another.
2. Lack of redundancies: Everything is sitting on a single server. When the server needs maintenance the site goes down. When the server has a hardware failure, the site goes down for hours or days.
3. It's not going to scale: The software is not built with consideration for load-balancing across multiple web servers. The only way you scale is to get a bigger server. Eventually you can't get a bigger server and now it's time for some major rewrites.
4. No full-time I.T. staff dedicated to the web service, and only the web service. When the unexpected happens (and it will happen) the ability to resolve the issue timely is hampered because of this."

Almost immediately after this post was placed up, Scott Musser posted a plain request for AuctionFlex to develop support for live simulcast auctions.


I don't want this post to come across as a play by play of other people's conversations - so I feel its time for me to weigh in with my 2 cents.


If you've read my earlier posts, you know how I feel about both timed internet auctions, live simulcast auctions, and their relationship to the auction industry in general - but I'll summarize my position here before moving forward.


Speaking as a young auctioneer, with a young man's view on technology, I cannot stress enough the importance going forward as an industry in working to streamline the auction marketing method with current and future technological trends. I have said before, and I will say again that there will ALWAYS be a place for a person with a microphone to stand before a crowd and talk fast - but as time goes on, if that person isn't as intimately familiar with modern technology and its ability to spread his marketing effectively and receive bids from as wide an audience as possible, he or she will quickly find themselves on the sidelines of our industry.


If it is too costly for the NAA to build their own internet bidding platform, and I believe that Brandon is probably right in his views on that subject, then it may be in all of our best interest to investigate the possibility of having the NAA work alongside AuctionFlex to develop an NAA branded portal - a National Auctioneers Association approved online market hub, where both timed and live simulcast auctions can be advertised to the general public, as well as performed to the same. This, in my humble opinion, would solve a great many problems all at once. I'll list a few below:
1. Increased Public Awareness - Having a destination hub for online bidding would raise public awareness of the NAA, its members, and the Auction Industry in general. This is an obvious boon to all the members of the NAA, to say nothing of the organization itself. The more money and merchandise that flows through this potential marketplace hub, the better it will be for all involved. If this isn't a goal we already have, it should be.

2. Open and Fair Playing Field - With a site and platform such as the one I'm imagining, all members of the NAA would have access to an enormous pool of potential bidders. If built properly and developed into an attractive and open marketplace for auctioneers and bidders, it would allow seamless advertising potential for any auction uploaded to it. Imagine you are a bidder, searching for an auction. You visit the site I'm proposing, and search for the item you are looking for. The auctioneers listing their sales can use this site as a marketing ground for their upcoming sales, while retaining their own bidders information for future marketing and sales. The NAA wouldn't have a horse in the race - they aren't in the business of directly marketing merchandise to bidders, rather they are a form of support, collaboration, partnership, and education for Auctioneers.

3. Cooperative Interests - What I mean by that is that quite simply, by pooling our resources as individual Auctioneers and Auction Firms, as well as the collaborative influence we already have built as the NAA, we all stand to gain. Having a hub/portal combination advertising & bidding platform site that is directly attached to the NAA will boost membership, drive increased attention to our "brand" as an organization, promote our organizations views on everything we stand for, enable free and open competition while greatly increasing the individual Auctioneer's marketing reach.


From what we've seen recently, I think it is fair to assume that the business decisions being made by Proxibid - what seems to myself and others I've listened to to be a shift towards direct competition and "eBayification" to borrow someone else's phrase - is likely to be the case for any major online bidding platform out there. I'm not begrudging Proxibid's decision to take their business in this direction - it is a smart move in their case (provided they can make their transition successfully), to grow their brand and their business (and let's face the facts, it IS business, and they are trying to get as big a piece of the pie as they can, a move I can understand). That being the case, I think it is in OUR best interests to change the way that we as individual auctioneer's are approaching online bidding platforms. As I see it, we have 3 routes to choose from. 
1. We can look forward to either abandoning the online market share or partnering with massive companies to host our sales alongside their own on their own branded platforms.
2. We can create our own NAA branded online platform as I discussed above, and use it rather than a 3rd party's platform
3. We can select online platforms hosted by companies that do not retain the information for themselves of the bidders who participate in our auctions that they host - companies where we "own" the data we collect from said bidders. This will forestall those online bidding platform suppliers from "eBaying" or "Proxibidding" up in the future.


Please let me know what you think - and if I missed something important along the way.

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 ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proxibid ][ 557 ][ 155 ][ $14,725.00 ][ $95.00 ][ 27.82% ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.