How Do You Feel About Public Auctions Without Live Viewing?

Floortrader I hear you! I participated yesterday in the Kelleher auction and I barely got a chance to click the bid because the prices exceeded Kelleher's estimate and my top bid so quickly. I can't help but think it is a supply/demand issue. Rasdale and Sparks both postponed their auctions and this Kelleher Collection Auction had 228 items and usually their Collections auctions have over 1100 lots so clearly supply was low so prices are high.

A few weeks ago when everything began to shut down and there was lots of uncertainty my ebay sales suffered and my average $/item went below $50, last week it had bounced back to $110. I think older fixed income people aren't spending as much on day to day items and activities because of the shutdown and stamp collectors have more $ for stamps.

Yesterday I was shut out at Kelleher because I just couldn't bid 2X Kelleher's estimate based on some words and no pictures. I found myself thinking that the other bidder must have seen it and is bidding based on that but then I realized no one has seen it so I passed.

Your right about my inventory, I have enough material to last me until the end of June and that's it. However my wife and I reserve our ebay profits for extras such as travel and home improvement and we have already canceled a big trip this this spring and may cancel our trip to northern Italy in the fall, so losing ebay income would be OK. Maybe this is the off ramp I've been looking for since I found I am really enjoying my retirement in this slower paced world.

Were you satisfied by the last week realizations of your lots? (I was outbid on several!).

I was very pleased and actually surprised. It was the best week I've had in months.

"That seems to be a common retort but is the rate really tied to the restrictions? Is that provable? I very much doubt it. But go ahead and prove it using science and data. I await."

What universe are you living in? You get the disease from encountering infected people. Restrict contacts with other people and you reduce the speed of transmission. Simple Math.

Has the media caused more fear and anxiety than is warranted? Absolutely.

Have some places gone too far in their restrictions given their infection rates/population densities/distance from hot spots? Perhaps. It is a very difficult cost/benefit question pitting economic and freedom against sickness and death considerations.

But stop giving us garbage that the lock downs have no slowed the virus.

Now back to the topic that this thread was started about. Bidding at auctions without live viewing. Dutch Country is going ahead with their May 15-16 auction without in person viewing, but "We have been working very hard to add more photos of some of the lots and we are posting videos to our YouTube channel. We will also give buyers the opportunity to have expanded descriptions and video viewing so that even from a distance, they can bid with confidence".

Eyeonwall -

"But stop giving us garbage that the lock downs have no slowed the virus"

It seems that the lockdowns may indeed have not been very effective because as random testing continues it is evident that far more people had the virus pre-lockdown than thought. 1.7 million in NYC for example and that number is rising as testing goes on. And so in some cases people that had the virus already were locked down in households with elderly relatives that had preexisting conditions.

In other words the horse had left the barn.

Everyone is learning from this. Locking down young people with their elderly relatives has proven to be a mistake in some cases. Locking down areas with very low infection rates has made little sense.

What is terrible was the Governor of New York's mandate that nursing homes take COVID-19 positive patients into their facilities. That has been a disaster. Over 6,000 beds for COVID-19 patients were constructed at a cost of 350 million dollars and the Hospital Ship Comfort was available. The ship left harbor and the facilities are being dismantled (the 2500 bed Javit's hospital was closed this week) after housing hardly any COVID-19 patients. They had enough empty beds for those elderly COVID-19 patients and even though nursing homes begged to have those folks placed there they were told no, you must take them.

Now that my friend is real "garbage".

Cheers

Back to the topic at hand. Have any SCF members viewed any lots yet via video yet? I am curious how it worked out.

And here I naively thought this was going to be a thread about auction house viewing practices. Instead its US politics all over again. I don't get why folks keep interjecting their American political debates into otherwise interesting threads, when I'm sure there are countless places on the internet for such things. Very tiresome. Seems I will need to take a wee break from SCF until people have gotten their politics out and start discussing stamp collecting again.

I almost always bid without seeing the lots I'm bidding on. I don't live near enough to any specialist auction houses to go in person. I have relatives who live near Somerset Stamp Auctions, and I've been there a couple of times but that's it. I'm not wealthy enough to swim in the sea that many posting here seem to bask in so I'm talking about low value bids.

Usually I win a few lose a few when I bid, and I have mixed success - sometimes I'm overjoyed by what I've won, sometimes not so much! The last auction I bid on I put in "cheeky" near minimum bids - and much to my surprise won everything I bid on. My take on it was that nobody was really bidding, and that in previous auctions the live bidding had been the driver for the eventual sale price

This weekend I bid again on some lots at SSA - again cheeky bids - and I am a bit nervous about the outcome. I'm worried I will either have won everything or nothing. In many ways nothing would be the better outcome as if I have won everything the domestic authorities will be seriously upset ........ and I could be in big trouble

With the reduction of available auction lots and the very big increase of viewing and bidding on ebay , I see this as a good time to reduce a lot of stuff that has been sitting around and I feel most dealers and collectors both are going to use this time as a "clean out the closet time ".
I spend the weekend at my friends place helping to ship orders and watching what is selling . I made up about 15 different country assortments for him to list over the next few days ,I get paid in stamps for my effort .We also set up accounts for him to buy his own lots at public auctions .

The reason large lots are doing well is because dealers are buying; apparently they are selling a lot of material online and need to replenish. I imagine some collectors are cleaning out the closets, but others seem to be adding to what they already have.

Crispin - hello. My recent, albeit limited experience, is that lots are going pretty well, considering the absence of viewing and the characteristic minimal illustrations of lots. I certainly haven't been acquiring much. I only bid on a couple of lots from the SSA sale, and won one. I hope the cash flow from the sale will tide them over for a while, as they're good people to deal with.

Cherrystone auction is over and I sat it out. I wanted lot 1799 and it went for $18,000 or $21,500 after commission and shipping, that's a lot to bid without any viewing or pictures. To make up for losing this I bought a big collection on ebay which had 800 pictures and no buyers commission. It's a big collection and will take a lot of work to break up and sell but at least I have an idea of what I'm getting.

Tomorrow Dutch Country's auction is running. I believe this is the 1st time they've run a live auction and it will be interesting to watch. I've asked the owner why he didn't go to the SAN live auction and he said it was too slow and his regular customers wouldn't stand for it. Normally Dutch Country does 200+ lots/hour which is 2-3 times faster than Kelleher so it will be interesting to see how it goes tomorrow.

Ehh?

The Dutch Country auction is on SAN with live bidding, and their own website says as much, so I'm not sure what he was talking about.

Dutch Country has been on SAN for 20 years, but they never used the Live Bidding format. Previously I had to submit my bids an hour before the auction and then 90% of the time I'd lose by 1 increment. I'm looking forward to watching/hearing/bidding in the Live Auction.