A live bid online auction can often be a better choice for you than using a traditional auction house to make your purchases. Before we get into the why and how of it though, a bit about what we mean when we say live bid online auction is in order.
We’re discussing here a traditional auction with a real, licensed auctioneer who calls the bids as they come in, but the whole thing is conducted online rather than in person. It’s completely unlike the more common models of online auctions and it’s important to keep that in mind when trying to understand why we’re so excited about them.
Here’s why we believe that an online auction run by a live auctioneer is a better choice than a traditional auction run by the same auctioneer:
Better Selection
When you go to a local auction, you are inevitably stuck bidding on whatever someone happened to have in their local home. Unless you happen to live in New York or London and plan to attend a Sotheby’s or Christie’s auction, you will, out of necessity, be limited in your choices.
An online auction, by comparison, offers you the opportunity to bid for items that may be located anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world. In some cases, the online auction house you work with may actually arrange for containers to ship items in, though more often than not, the online auction house will have whatever is local to them, which likely will not be what is local to you.
Better Prices
Let’s face it, when you’re sitting at an auction house in person, things can get a little heated. Someone spots something and on a whim decides they simply must have it. Then they see you bidding on the same thing and feel almost compelled to outbid you just so you can’t have it.
While some of those emotions will obviously spill over into an online auction, you will see less of them. Plus, because the silent auction ideas concept of using a live bid online auction simply is not very well known yet, you may be able to score some great bargains, just like you used to back in the days before PBS started teaching everyone to look differently at the junk in their home and realize that they may have valuable antiques (via the Antiques Roadshow).
Convenience
For some of us, driving an hour to the auction house is a weekend activity and gives us something to do. However, for those of us who enjoy collecting rather than standing around all day in a stuffy auction.
There is no more driving there and getting stuck in traffic only to learn that the item you had your heart set on just closed ten minutes before you got there. There is no racing to get there early so you can find a seat rather than be stuck standing in the back of the room. And you don’t even have to worry about carrying precious antiques home in the car as they’ll be shipped to you, professionally packed and insured.