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I thought the B&L auction went very well. Outbid emails and auto-bid emails were received very timely. However I did not yet receive a confirmation of winning a lot? Hope everyone is happy this morning, I am!!! Good job S & L.
We think the auction went well. We are getting with our s/w guy today to go over some operational things. The reason we haven't gotten invoices out is that we have to go over the shipping/insurance on each one. As far as a winning bidder email....I am not sure and will find out today . It was a learning experience for both Scott and I. I will give a better update later.....Rest assured everything will be handled professionally, efficiently and to the best of our abilities. There is another thread started below too, concerning the auction, so eventually we will probably only want 1 thread to talk about it. No different than anything else in that respect. Scott and I will be around all day if anyone would like to call or has any questions. My number is 214-282-4943 and his is 817-688-9499.....thanks again
Leon - once the dust settles, I'd be fascinated to read your thoughts on how things went - including how some of the decisions you guys made impacted the auction in the end.
...I am happy with my first experience consigning cards to any auction house -- figured this was something worth supporting given the hard work of its founders. I think my lot of 3 autographed Goudey cards went for about what I would expect them to go for -- not so high, but certainly not too low.
All in all, I would definitely go with B&L again for my consignment needs.
Look in the upper right corner of the front page of Net54 and you will see the Green banner that says "Auction ends June 12th". It's been there for 2 weeks on every page of the forum. It was in the rotation of banners for the last 3 months. We advertised in SCD, Beckett and Old Cardboard and did email blasts with partners including signing on with VCP.....It was featured in a Beckett interview and was also featured on the Sports Collectors Daily website. We had a 150+ thread about it when we announced it which was on the front page for several days. I am sorry if you didn't catch any of those. You might consider going to register right now and you will receive periodic emails. We hope we have something for you in our next auction. Please let me know if I can be of assistance..take care
ps.....we don't intend to do catalogs until it makes fiscal sense and is warranted. We don't feel a 200+- auction warrants it. We are always open to suggestions and to looking for better ways to serve our customers and friends in the hobby....One thing we tried not to do is smear the board with lots of threads about it. I doubt members want something crammed down their throats..
This message has been edited by leonl on Jun 13, 2008 11:24 AM This message has been edited by leonl on Jun 13, 2008 11:23 AM
I know I am very difficult to get a hold of for help in these matters but let me know next time and I will help. I know my email is pretty hard to find too but you could have done that also (just messin' with ya') ...Chances are you either put in a wrong email address (about 5 folks put in an extra letter or a missing one or something...) or the email registration went to your spam folder. The registration is s/w driven so it wasn't a human error on our part.......Sorry about that either way....I can always be reached at 214-282-4943. .......and that number is plastered so many places I can't even count them all.....once again, my apologies and look forward to you participating in our Fall auction...
A little aftermath of the auction with some learning experiences. These are in no particular order......
1. There is about a 5-10 second lag time in the auction close and the s/w. I think it has to do with refresh rates and there is literally nothing that can be done about it (within this s/w). Someone was high bidder at 9pm and was the only bidder. At 9pm and 6 seconds another bid was placed. This is a s/w issue we didn't know about but do now. We apologize for the inconvenience. That will be something we make known going forward and we are very sorry it happened (and) without us knowing about it.
2. We need to figure out the issue with the max bids not being able to be left. There were about a half a dozen folks with this same issue. I am not sure if it was a button that wasn't being pressed, or what, but we will find out and let folks know.
3. This auction s/w didn't reset after each bid as I thought it would after initial bidding was over. It reset every 15 minutes if there was a bid placed in that previous 15 minutes. We just didn't know that is the way it works. Now we do. The auction ended at 12:30 am which wasn't too bad though an hour earlier might be better.
4. Neither Scott nor myself could place bids for anyone. Same thing with seeing "up to" bids...which is what we want. One bidder asked for me to help and I emailed our s/w provider and he did an up to bid for someone. Scott or I will NEVER be able to see up to bids (on purpose). We have a very "honest" s/w in that respect. Maybe "honest" to a fault though...meaning we need to be able to help bidders when they need it.
5. Our next auction will be 1 week shorter. We don't see the need to have a week of dead space in the auction...and that is basically what that 2nd week was.
6. We found out after the auction was already being put into place that we couldn't close lots individually. If our auction gets to where we hope it does (much larger)we will have to re-evalute our s/w needs....It is not our plan to have all night auctions....
7. We have had a few small issues with unexpected downtime that need to be addressed. Nothing critical but it's slightly disturbing.
Overall we think it went very well, especially for a first auction. As I/we think of more I will edit this post and add to it....but for the moment that's what I can think of..... We have already had many nice emails pointing out our lower fees too.....I guess people do notice....Thanks again to everyone who participated and the general interest shown. Scott and I really appreciate it.
edited one word out to not have incomplete sentence.
This message has been edited by leonl on Jun 13, 2008 8:16 PM
The last thing I remember seeing was that the auction lots were not up yet. I don't look at the banner ads....sorry advertisers.
I feel like I know how many minutes and seconds there are until Barry's auctions end. Was there a post that said your auction was up and going. Boy and I would have paid a fortune for those signed Goudey cards. Greg has a good point on Barry--I am sure he would work cheaply as your pr guy.
Rob--in case you are even part serious I did talk to Doug in person and reported the conversation on this board.
many thanks for getting back to me so quickly via email.
i am absolutely elated that i won my first NON 206 cards via your
Auction. just don't tell the Monster.
All of the INCORRECT winning invoices did just go out via email with $2000 for shipping....They will have corrected shipping/insurance added to them within a few days. At that time EACH WINNER will need to login to see the actual exact invoice amount. You can print and mail that or you can wait on the USPS one. We will send out an email to registered bidders to check online for your invoice amount after they are corrected. Within the next 3-4 days correct invoices will be put in the USPS mail to all winning bidders.
There was a step in the s/w setup of THIS particular auction that made it where bidders could NOT increase their max bid if they already had one in place. That will NOT be an issue next time.....We were unaware of this until just now....Our apologies for this.
All consignor statements have been emailed (I believe)...If you didn't get one please email me at leonl@flash.net about it.....or the auction email.... I will be checking the auction email but not as frequently as the leonl@flash.net one....
Thank you Scott & Leon for a very nice first auction. I hope in future auctions you'll continue to have items that those of us on smaller budgets can afford to bid on. Congratulations to whomever won the SGC60 Little Rhody as I ended up the underbidder. I did manage to pick up my first T204.
This message has been edited by craigw67217 on Jun 13, 2008 6:28 PM
My FIRST ever auction win and my first Sovereign 460. Thanks to Leon and Scott for having material that everybody can afford. I hope that trend continues.
After only a short time here, I have learned that important lesson. Just frustrates me that this love of baeball and all things associated with it has taken a sad turn for the worst.
I left the hobby 20 years ago because of the over marketing of the products and the sheer greed of the "dealers", guess it's about time to go back to sorting out the shoe boxes again.
Remember the smell of those cards..........the gum, the attic aroma, you could almost smell the leather of the gloves, this is why I collect.
I agree with whoever said keep offering cards for smaller budgets, as you'll probably get some of my money that way. I think having a wide variety of cards on different price levels is key to success. It gives you a much wider audience. While I didn't bid on any cards this time around, there were a few that sparked my interest. If not for other budget concerns, I would have placed a few bids. Keep it up with the cheaper stuff!
David knows the deal. Get me while I'm cheap. I'm still young....in a few years I'll be getting the D304 Cobb I've come to love in the short time I've been collecting pre-war. Hell, I'm only 26. I'm getting there.
Nice auction but I forgot you were in Texas and got the dreaded 8.25% sales Tax added. I haven't paid Tax on a card in many years. I guess my BL hammer will be in the Sotheby's range now.
Anyway I'm happy with my pick-up
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I just received an e-mail stating that correct invoices are now available online, but you'd better double-check the shipping totals. I was the high bidder on one card, and the shipping and handling is $5. I know that cannot be correct, because I typically am charged $10-$20 by auction houses to ship a single card.
It is correct. We stated low shipping charges and we meant it....I think folks will be happy....Remember, we participate in lots of auctions every week too. We don't charge for our tape either. There is one very large company that I have to call after every auction about the outrageous shipping charges...and I am getting really tired of it...but that's for another thread.......If anyone has any questions about anything my leonl@flash.net email is a little better than the auction one but I am checking it too....take care and thanks again
edited typo
This message has been edited by leonl on Jun 14, 2008 12:42 PM
We have a Texas tax ID # as we are near Dallas....sorry about that. But we have to report it to the Texas Comptroller...as you know. We are doing the best we can...take care
Leon. I wasn't blaming you for the Tax. I know you don't have any control over that.
I'll just have to keep the Tax in mind next time, no big deal.
Well run auction for inaugral trip.
Thanks Dan
I love the Image
I was underbidder on the New Cubs Postcard also. I was unsure about making a increase to my auto-bid when I was already the highbidder and ended up losing it.
This message has been edited by TheBig6 on Jun 14, 2008 7:47 PM
Whoa, Nelly! Not to sound like a broken record, but I had been out of town and just checked my auction winnings. I won Lot 42 which had fifteen graded T206 card....and shipping was only $8! Great job on the auction guys!!!
. It was a learning experience for both Scott and I. I will give a better update later.....Rest assured everything will be handled professionally, efficiently and to the best of our abilities. There is another thread started below too, concerning the auction, so eventually we will probably only want 1 thread to talk about it. No different than anything else in that respect. Scott and I will be around all day if anyone would like to call or has any questions. My number is 214-282-4943 and his is 817-688-9499.....thanks again
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