A New Stamp Auction Website

Have read a lot of posts about the shortcomings of ebay Bidstart etc so though it would be interesting to see what people want from a site that auctions/sells etc stamps

So if you were setting up a website from scratch to auction and sell stamps what would you want it to do and offer?

Will be very interested to see what people think

PS I am not looking at setting up such a site

What will you do with the information?

Terry

Nobody wants another stamp auction website, there are too many already . There are over 80,000,000 websites now ,how are they going to find this new site . What third party is going to protect my bidding or does the owner max out my bids and I get everything at my maxmium bid .We have a history in the stamp business of people consigning material to a stamp auction firm and never getting paid at the end of the auction .There are crooks on ebay but crooks who run stamp auctions get to steal a thousand times more .

Really, it is pretty simple. A high level of traffic (whatever a high level would be) of stamp collectors visiting the site. Quick and easy listing of items for sale. Low commissions/fees - I don't mind paying but don't gouge me. Good marketing to keep the site fresh and vibrant.

I can't imagine starting yet another one, and hoping for listings, and traffic, and some measure of profit to boot.

As floortrader says, there are probably too many already. Better to try to approach an existing venue to effect change for the better, than to try to build a better mousetrap.

All this being said, to further the original question, I would suggest that the model should incorporate auto extensions to end times, to minimize sniping.

Eliminating sniping will cause many bidders to depart permanently. That's part of the game, and the game's open to everybody. I think one of the important factors, although not the MOST important, is keeping it simple and uncluttered. One of my big gripes about ebay is their trying to be everything to everybody, trying to tie in charitable donations, trying to keep the bidders secret (a bad sign), trying to introduce multiple redundancies into the system. If they hadn't simplified and shortened their listing form a few years ago, they'd be road kill by now.

I wrote them a letter a few years ago, asking if they couldn't include a feature that you could remove unwanted crap from their listing form, and save the slimmed-down form permanently, as your own edited format. Of course they didn't answer.

Hunh...I suppose that might be true. I snipe on sites where it works, but I didn't mind buying on sites that extended auctions after last-second bids, either.

Extending auctions seems more fair to the sellers, to give a maximum chance for the best price to be paid, but since I'm an infrequent seller, my thoughts are based on theory and not experience.

I like Weeda Stamp Auctions for that very reason. Everything starts at zero and if there is a bid for anything in the auction in the last three minutes, it resets. This will go on for a few hours until everyone is happy. Seems to work pretty good.

Goes on until everyone is happy? So who decides when the auction ends? I would be definitely unhappy if I had what was the winning bid at the 'end' only to find the auction extended.

Terry

One option is that a bid within the last five minutes extends the auction for another five minutes.

Theoretically, if two people keep bidding, the auction could go on for a while. The winner wins, the seller wins, and presuming the site charges some sort of final value fee, the site wins. The only loser is the person who didn't avail him/herself of the opportunity to bid more.

I've never been to a live auction that had a fixed ending time. Perhaps I don't get out enough.

I would miss the snipers.:)

Some are so good that a sold lot ends up in the unsold list and gets relisted. I will check and recheck the unsold list after each auction day to look for correction that need to take place because a sniper can take a lot out of the unsold list.

I manually snipe at the 6 second mark, then confirm at the 3 second mark. And win most of what I go for.

Terry