Howdy folks, here I is again. I've been thinking about auctions. My first auction experience was
intimidating because I just didn't know what to do. It was in Boise, Idaho and well, I just went up to the desk and asked for a number, signed in as it were. It's was pretty easy to get going, really so don't let it scare you. The first thing to remember if you want to take the plunge is to go to the preview. Find out when this is and be sure you leave yourself plenty of time to look everything over. I always had the idea of Christies Auction House or these shows you see on TV auctioning off antiques and thought you had to dress up for it, but really the type of auction you want for a beginner level is not exclusively for fine antiques, although there may be some there, what you want to find on auction is the more common stuff, collectibles and household items.
Check your town for weekly or monthly auctions.
Some auctions are conducted at a home or business that is being cleared. While these house clearing auctions can be fun and have lots of neat stuff try to find an auction house that has regular auctions in a particular location. You might want to just go to your first auction and watch. This is totally acceptable.
When you go to have a look during the preview time, be sure you have time to go home and research the items you are interested in. Some preview times are just before the actual auction but usually it is the day before or if it is on the same day they allow plenty of time before the auction starts. You'll want to take a notepad, pen and your digital camera. Always ask if it is OK
to take photographs before you start snapping away. If it is not OK leave your camera in the car. When you are previewing decide what sort of item you want to check out. You can of course bid on household items for yourself, too, but be careful not to get carried away. Decide before hand what you are willing to let yourself bid on. If you are going strictly to bid on things for resale then give yourself a limit on the money you will spend over all and limit on what you will bid on each
item. Determine this limit when you've researched your items from the preview. Write your limits down next to each item you are going to bid on. You should have a preprinted list of auction items from the auction house. They may have charged a small fee to cover the cost of printing.
You should already know how to research an item (but this has just given me an idea for a blog post. My adventures in research! Watch this space! ...... )
My thought as to how to bid is to bid low....... I am not willing to pay very much at all for an item
until I know for sure how valuable it is and that I will be able to resell it. I consider this my learning period and therefore the cost of what I buy is the cost of learning. Hopefully I can take
some things home for say less than a couple or a few dollars (or pounds here in the UK where I am right now) and be able to them take them back later on and re-auction them if they are not something I want. You can sometimes buy box lots which are several items in a box for one bid. Sometimes you will have to buy the whole box in order to get one thing that is in it. So bid low while learning, don't for heavens sake spend much money until you know more. This may take you months. We are newbies after all!
So then once you have your bidder number, and are familiar with the terms, there is a buyer's premium you will pay on things as well as sales tax so keep that in mind when deciding what to bid on something. The buyer's premium can be 5% on up to 15% or more. I would not want to pay more than 10% myself which is already pretty high, and once you've done your research, you are ready to go and bid. Show up early and get yourself fairly close to the things being bid on as they go along. It can be very crowded and people will want to crowd around. You may have to be slightly assertive. Auctions can take hours so ask before it starts which side of the room they are starting on and when they might get to the items you are interested in. It may be that you can sort of hang about outside for a bit if your items are in the middle or at the end. I would not recommend going away somewhere as I did this once. I thought it would take an hour or more
for them to get around to my things so we went to breakfast, (you may wish to bring a snack and something to drink). Well, they had swept right past my things and by the time I had returned my items were sold. These auctions can actually move quite rapidly, too. You never know. They may move around a bit too and not go in an orderly sweep from one side of the room to the other. I would suggest that you stay for an entire auction a few times and watch and listen so that you can get a feeling for what things are going for, who the people are who bid, (watch their expressions) and how the procedure usually goes. Make notes about items you have interest in but don't wish to bid on, so that you can refer back when you find another piece like it either online, in a shop or another auction.
Oh, a bit more about previewing the items.......
Do not be afraid to pick something up and look it over. Be very careful of course or you will be buying before the auction starts, but do pick something up and look at it's general condition, any damage or wear and look for any marks that will give you information about the piece. The finer things are often behind glass, don't be afraid of asking to see and handle something. Sometimes you can tell a lot about a piece merely by it's weight and feel. If you don't handle something and you think you've done your homework and bid on it and then you take it home and it's got a slight chip or ding and is now basically worthless, you've only yourself toblame.
Now a bit about bidding. How is it done? when to start bidding? when and how to stop? It's easy
enough to start bidding, you just wave your bid number or stick your hand up. Make sure you have eye contact with the auctioneer and he knows you are bidding. When do you start? Well, not on the first asking bid. In other words when the auctioneer comes out with an opening bid, wait to see if it goes lower. A good practise is to wait till he goes low but don't wait until he is scrapping bottom. If you know the value of an item an auctioneer will appreciate it if you start bidding at what would be a reasonable amount. If you wait for an item that is worth several hundred dollars to go lower than say $50 then you are being unreasonable. Of course you want to buy it for as little as possible but you are making the auctioneer work unnecessarily hard
because it is going to go up anyway if it is really that valuable. There is a whole slew of things you need to know about the way auctioneers work and it would take me a lot of time to list them here so I won't but a good resource is the Auction Wally podcast and website. He also has a good ebook on how to sell and buy at auctions.
http://auctionwally.mybisi.com/products/eBooks_171837/?page1The Auction Wally Network and the Auction Wally website are listed in my links, below.
When you are bidding you can get carried away. Be sure to stick to your plan and your limits. I
sometimes let my husband do the bidding because one time we were actually bidding against each other, so now only one of us bids. But it annoys me when I tell him how much I want to bid on an item and my limit and he bids past it. We end up paying too much for something I was only interested in up to a point.
So when do you stop and how do you stop? Well, if its just got too rich for you just shake your head, No, and lower your bid number and that's all you have to do. Just make sure that the auctioneer is quite clear that you are no longer bidding on that item. Don't shuffle around and wave your arm or draw attention to yourself - just stay still and shake your head, no.
Once you've had a successful bid, now what? Well, you can cash out as soon as the cashier has the item in the computer. This may take a few minutes. You can wait until its all over or you can pay and go. Ask one of the helpers to check you out. They will match your receipt with the item number. Sometimes you can come back the next day and pick things up. Just be sure to take your pieces by the time they want everything cleared out as they have to make room for the next week's items.
Well, I think that's about it, not that hard really. There are tricks to look for to see if the auctioneer is on the up and up or not, but let Auction Wally let you in on all that.
Ask to see if you will be allowed to bring some things in for auction yourself. Some places only
handle their own house clearances and don't want bits and bobs of other people's stuff taking up
room. Just ask - they are willing to help.
Auction people and serial garage-salers and flea marketers like me are a unique brand of people. I like to think of us all as Junktiquers. It's a slice of society where there is a lot of eccentricity. Most of these folks are wonderful and sharing and can be very amusing and informative, especially the ones who have been doing it for awhile.
Happy auctioning!
and Londonderry NI and are getting settled in now, so hopefully you will forgive me for not posting to the blog in awhile.
