Selling at Auction Comes of Age
- By Bruce McKinney
Book selling as it was
The next generation of collectors emerges using new tools to find material. The challenge is to encourage acquirers to buy at auction. They buy on eBay because it's perceived cheap, online because the listings are extensive, at shows and shops because human interaction is comfortable, and at garage sales because “you never know.” Auctions are perceived as more serious, more complicated, the material more difficult to identify, the opportunities fleeting. The challenge for auction houses is to create better visibility and a sense of continuity with collectors. Auctions aren't single sales, they are a cascade of continuing events.
To encourage this transition and to help ensure there are enough bidders and buyers to match with the extraordinary volume of material that comes to market over the next ten years we are shifting the emphasis on AE to include both a more powerful real time presentation of upcoming material and a mechanism for capturing fleeting and continuing interests in specific items in a easy way that will permit they who sell to better understand how much interest there is in particular material. To do this we are beginning to add links for all who use our databases, whether free or paid, to be able to track specific items, whether in an upcoming auction, Books for Sale or the AED, and to then request specific outcomes and/or continue to follow future reappearances. Individuals may track up to 5,000 items. Confirmation of continuing interest is required every six months to maintain access to the free service.
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Selling at Auction Comes of Age
- By Bruce McKinney
What online selling looks like today
Consider then the impact of knowing that 15 people have expressed interest in an item, to know this when you run searches in the AED and to further know that if you post this item we will notify each party and confirm to you that we have done so. This process has the power to alter what is sent into the rooms, how it is estimated, who bids and how much is paid. In the world as we see it there is increasing clarity and a rising role for auctions to clear material as it comes to market.
We do not do this for the benefit of auction consignors alone. While we will match all upcoming auction lots we will also match all listings in Books for Sale. Sellers, be they dealers, institutions or collectors, will all benefit by this approach and can offer their material to those who read and research on AE.
To do this we need to focus on the next generation. To accomplish this we need all auction houses we support to handle more of the mechanical aspects of uploading the listings. We encourage you to provide images to more forcefully convey a positive impression. We will integrate these images into home page presentations and provide mechanisms for those interested to see your catalogues as a slideshow with viewer controls.
We are of course now triangulating searches in our databases so that a search anywhere finds relevant records everywhere on the site. In beta testing more than 90% of items in upcoming auctions were opened when the number of search results is 7 or less. Because less than 20% of the market thinks of checking upcoming auctions as an efficient use of time, including them in all search results brings them to the attention of the much larger audience that conducts research and browses Books for Sale.
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Selling at Auction Comes of Age
- By Bruce McKinney
Selling as it will be: tracking
With the recent upgrades on the Americana Exchange we seek to provide the clarity needed to bring the next generation into the field. This generation both knows more and trusts less and expects clarity. Where clarity confirms collectors are interested.
We ask for your increasing help and we in turn will bring auctions lots directly into mix of everyday choices, increasing the number of bidders and raising realizations.
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