How Do You Feel About Public Auctions Without Live Viewing?

"NYStamps, TD?, NobleSpirit all seem to have some 'magic' that get folks to bid and chase bids on every item they sell. I put something up for auction (at any price .01-$$$$), I can't catch a bid until the end of the auction. I really would like to know the trick :-)"

I don't have a clue who TD? is, but the "trick" of the other two is they put up a huge amount of material at negligable starting price and as a result they have a huge following. I put up the same item with my "measly" 3705 feedbacks and it goes for a fraction of what they get usually.

"The point I am making is who cares about price if your enjoying yourself and you had a good year"

Not all of us has the spare cash to be able to not care about what the price is.

CKstamps was in my head when I said "TD?" - who knows why....PAVstamps,...a few others who seem to have the same charm and make the unworkable penny auction start thing work well for them.

jamesg,

Do you have the right adjectives? Enough pictures?

I've purchased from NobleSpirit a few times when it was something that tickled my fancy, but most of the time the stuff that seems interesting goes for a lot more than I'm willing to part with.

A fair amount of the time I just scratch my head and wonder what it is those bidders think they see.

Dale

A quick view of CKstamps auctions makes me wonder if they may use some shilling accounts. I won't go into why I feel that way, but that is my opinion.

Another reason why they may get a lot of bidding is that they start lots at a penny AND offer free shipping. Years ago when yahoo email groups were thriving (on a respirator these days), I saw several posts where people checked several times a day only for lots starting at 1 cent AND free shipping. They would then place a 5 cent or 10 cent bid on every one. A couple of the posts claimed to win cheap items routinely.

I have won CK many times and don't know if he does. I for one, put early bids on his auctions at .10c to track things. I guess other people do that at varying levels too.
I also win some things at all ends of spectrum. I have won $3,300, and $1000 bids, and even returned the 1000 stamp all without issue. Hes very reliable, and has material in my area that is uncommon.

He may be using shills but I would think he doesn't need to. The 1c openers get a lot of early traction.

The biggest ebay sellers, like NY and CKStamps, have thousands of followers. They don't need shill bidding. Why would they risk their successful businesses, grossing a couple million dollars a year, when their thousands of real followers will bid their auctions up every time?

One word: greed.

Let's either hear some evidence or stop throwing stones.

I first ran into NYStamps around 2003 -04 at Greg Manning Stamp Auctions in New Jersey ,he was buying collections , not many but a few .

Later I ran into him around 2006-8 at Rasdale's in Chicago,by this time he was a auction "HOG", they were buying everything ,everything is the large lots at the end of the auction .Dealers in the Midwest couldn't compete and many of us were vocal about it .

I lost track of what they were doing because Rasdale's new bidding system can and does hide who is bidding .All those show and bourse dealers have now been replaced by ebay sellers and half of them don't show up for the lot viewing days ,so now it is a totally different crowd bidding .

Given NYStamps volume it is obvious that they Hoover-up auction material. One thing I wonder about lately is how much consignment material is ending up with them directly instead of auction houses such as Rasdale and Kelleher. Now that would be truly ironic.

I suspect very little. Why would NYStamps want to bother with a 20% piece of the pie when they can get much more by just buying those lots at auction. Certainly no dealer is going to sell directly to him.

I am not talking about dealers. I am talking about "civilians".

"I have come here for an argument" "No you have not"

You may be right about NYStamps ,they can be going around to stamp stores and bourse dealers and offering the owners a better deal than they can get from the auction houses . Remember the firms are asking 10 to 15% from the seller and then getting 15% to 20% from the buyer so there is a lot of room 30 to 35% that NYStamps got to play with in buying direct .

Look at the extra profit in buying a $1,000,000 inventory and selling it direct to ebay BUYERS ......lots of room for profit if your buying wholesale and selling retail without a auction house in the middle .

As a "civilian", would you go to NYStamps to try to sell or consign material? They have no real need to accept consignments unless it is high class material. They would almost certainly try to buy anything brought to them outright, in which case you would probably lose money.