Another Auction House (H.r. Harmer) Preparing To Leave Stamp Auction Network?

Just received in email from H.R. Harmer:




While they don't explicitly say they are leaving SAN, it is another auction house offering their own inhouse auction platform ala Siegel.

Having 2 live online platforms running at the same time will certainly add complexity (and time delays) to the auction process.

Most likely it is a test to see how many of their S.A.N. users are going to switch over .

They are testing to see how many new bidders will find their own site . My guess is most S.A.N. people will stay where they are .

I will be surprise if they get many new bidders coming in, into their in house system .Using S.A.N. to build a solid book of active bidders

I was at the CAPEX show last week and SAN had a booth there, where I got to meet Tom and Dan.

I currently have a FREE MEMBERSHIP with SAN, but I asked them to show me what I would get if I had a yearly paid subscription.

I can see that having data from auctions going back over 16 years can be a very powerful tool. I saw how one American auction house had sold the same 24-Cent 1869 Declaration of Independence stamp 5 times. Being used, it is pretty easy to see it is the same stamp. They declare it is sold to the book, but in fact it never met their minimum. They offered it 5 times in 2 years.

Lots of other interesting information can be gleaned from their database; information that I imagine auction houses probably would prefer was not available to their customers/bidders. I would also assume that they have no love for the "Unattended Live" option either.

The cost of setting up your own site could be as high as $20K, and then you need a team of people ensuring that it is working at its optimum capability.

Not sure which of the two issues would be considered of primary concern to the auction houses.

Controlling your own destiny makes it a 'no brainer' in my opinion. Imagine you and your family spend 20 years building up your auction business and then decide to sell it. The delta in the value of the business would be significant between having your own intellectual property/database and having your company tied to the future of a third-party company (whom you have no control over).

If I were an auction house, I would see being able to hold auctions as a core competency of the business. So unless someone believes that the internet is going away, why would an auction company not invest doing online auctions? I think that those auction houses which are not heading in the direction of having internal online auction capability are the 'legacy' companies who are fearful or who do not have much vision.
Don

$20k would be a very small drop in the bucket to setup your own (unless done in house by an amateur).