Some of you remember that I did auctions for a few years a few years
ago. I stopped for technical reasons. Now I'm considering how
to and whether to.
1. I think that auction participants and fixed price buyers might be
compared with, um, carnivores and herbivores in a way. If we accept
that simile for purposes of illustration, my experience has been that there
is not much crossover between the two types of customers.
2. The possibility of luck for any participant in an auction (bidder,
owner, dealer) cuts all ways.
3. Certain legal issues come into play with auctions that don't with
straight over the table deals. Straight across the table buyer-seller
is different from a pack of bidders jostling. Issues of fairness,
transparency. Steve Album: you can call the office and make a deal
but he has a 4 page set of terms for his auction.
We're also considering the possibility of turning into anythinganywhere-bay,
you can post your own stuff, we get a cut.
1. We can't guarantee quality or anything else really, have to rely
on user feedback to rank participants. The whole point of this website
is that a human will review the order and you can talk to someone about
something. If there are 100 posters or a million you won't be able
to get any useful information about what those users are doing.
2. Aside from the possibility of luck, I present the possibility that
we, knowing what we are doing to some extent in this market (coins and
other old things), can get better results for you on average than you can
on your own.
3. Pro: passive income from commissions for work that other people
do
Comments?