Auction hints and tips

[mseguin]

Hi there, if anyone doesn't know me, I'm Matt, and this is my third season on the exec, and 4th in OVAS. For much of that time I've been participating in the auctions as an auctioneer, for both mini auctions and the Giant Auctions. I just thought I'd pass along some of my observations from being at the center of the auctions ~8 times a year. If you feel referenced by any of my comments or tips, please don't be offended. these are meant as constructive criticism, not to be insulting.

Labels on the bags: A little information can help a lot to sell your item. For plants, lighting requirements, planting area (fore/mid/background), and growth rate are valuable information. For fish, max size, pH and temp requirements, and temperament are also great info. The flip side of that is, keep it concise. Having the front of your bag of hornwort covered with info makes it seem much more daunting than it should be. And calling your guppies by their scientific name may just confuse someone who otherwise might be very interested in their bright colours. If you have a rare fish that few people will ahve seen before, including a picture of the animal in full colour never hurts either.

Minimum bids: This could be a long one. Minimum bids definitely serve a purpose. If you bought a 200$ filter 3 months ago but now have to sell it, you'd like to know you're not going to get 5$ for your filter. On the other hand, if you bought a heater for 20$ 3 years ago, well sorry to say, you got your money's worth for it. Asking for a $7 minimum bid on it might be just a tad bit ridiculous.
Also, keep in mind that a minimum bid often dissuades people from even starting to bid on an item, even if they quite possibly would have gone higher than the minimum bid. Unless you really don't want to part with an object for less than a certain amount, minimums can be more counterproductive than useful.

Item quanitities: Again there's a few aspects to this. Realistic numbers per item are important. If a fish does better in pairs, don't sell them in large groups. And conversely, 1 or 2 fish of a schooling species isn't nearly as attractive to bid on as 4 or 5 together. To use an example from the latest auction: one of the cooler items was a group of 14 tank bred dwarf puffers. Very cool and rare item, and the minimum bid price was very fair. Only problem is, not that many people have room for that many puffers. Perhaps splitting it into 3 or 4 items would have helped?
And keep in mind, bringing 3 or more of the same item tends to swamp the market and lower the overall price. Some items are in high enough demand that this isnt the case, and it also varies by month, but for example, splitting ur java moss into 5 smaller bunches tends to cause each of them to go for 1 or 2 dollars.

Useless items: Every auction, one or two items (or unfortunately sometimes more) will show up that go unsold, not because they've got a minimum bid too high, or everyone is too cheap, but rather, because the items probably should jsut have been thrown out. It can be 75% empty chemicals, old hardened air tubing, or any other number of items its extremely anyone will need or want to give a loonie or two for. It may seem like a minor inconvenience, but as an example, at last season's Giant Auction, roughly 140 items went unsold. Conservatively assuming 10-15 seconds allocated to trying to auction the item, running it back and forth, etc, that figures to about 30 mniutes of extra time. If some of that can be cut down by getting rid of items that aren't likely to sell, it will even help sell the rest of your items. If you wouldn't buy it, then probably someone else wouldnt either.

That's it for now, I'll post more as I think of them.
Also to come, tips for buyers.

[babblefish1960]

An excellent suggestion with good sound advice, good one Matty, I look forward to further installments.

[irene]

Splitting the puffer would have been a good idea, that occurred to me after.   Oh well, live and learn...

Irene

[darkdep]

This is great stuff, thanks for this Matt.  I've stickied this post.

[garnpet]

Some food for thought - these numbers are from the last mini-auction


Items starting at the minimum bid:                   118
   Items selling at the minimum bid:                    37
   Items selling at the more than minimum bid:  71
   Items not selling at the minimum bid:            10

Items with a reserve bid:                                23
   Items selling at the reserve bid:                     6
   Items selling at the more than reserve bid:    1
   Items not selling at the reserve bid:              15

[dan2x38]

Excellent post very good info. I too look forward to more input. I think the auctions could be that much better with a little more insite. At least speaking for for myself... Thanks Matt

[hamstercaster]

Wow, some of the points I raised back in September and where I was pretty much told I made no sense made their way in Matt's Auction Tip and now everybody think they are great idea...  Ah well, I'm happy people finally realise I wasn't that much off the tracks after all...

[dpatte]

clean your items before trying to sell them. you'll get a better price.

[Vincenzo.]

i have a question...can you bring what ever you want to auction at the monthly meetings?
like for example: i have a complete 10gal setup...i just want to get rid of for cheap because it's just taking up space...and some other equipment