This evening I conducted a Reverse Auction and am offering my thoughts on how it went. I'd wanted to do this format for a long time, partly for my own interest on how it would go, and decided to try it out. Overall I only received a few bids, so it was a bit of a fizzer, but that may be more circumstantial or simply be due to my prices or items. It shouldnt necessarily be a reflection on the reverse auction format. These were the auction conditions: I attempted to list the 'discount' amount each minute, but quickly noticed that the thread was becoming very long with little activity. So I then tried 'edit post' to just update a post with new discounts/times. I realised that this had issues because it was hard to tell what exact price someone bid at, as the time stamps were then out of sync. So I found myself frequently refreshing the page and it was quite time intensive. I also ran into the 'you have to wait X seconds before posting' warning, which is not good in this auction format. I also had a brief internet interruption thanks to the microwave being used near the wifi router (seriously never noticed it before now) and that gave me some brief panic as I had intended to withdraw some items. In hindsight I would: Ask for all bidders to include bid time/price & item. Only remind of the price every 5mins, OR say that the price is only reduced if I post a reduction. This would take pressure off me and my internet connection and an auction could be slowed down if there were issues. Possible told people of the reserve/withdraw price? May have made more sense I think. Allowed pre-auction bids or something, for people who can't attend. That would set a floor on prices at least. Problems with Reverse Auction format: Not allowing early bids means that people have to be active in a particular minute to get their bid in. This is time intensive for me and other people. Tricky if you can't be available at exactly 6:27 due to a crying baby or something. I originally considered an 'anti sniping' rule but then realised people could deliberately wait until someone bid and then quickly bid themselves... hence making it counter productive and reducing prices further. It works for auctions but not reverse auctions. The methods I used were time intensive and withdrawing items at particular price intervals was tricky and time consuming. There could be disputes over exactly what the discount was, depending on time stamps. Someone could argue that according to a particular clock it was 6:27, but on my clock may have been 6:26, etc. A regular auction doesn't have this issue as it is simply prices in chronological order. Anyway, just thought i'd post about it. Some people commented that it was entertaining at least, so that's a positive. Anyone else have any thoughts on it?
Thanks for running the auction and posting feedback on it. It is a format I have been interested in. As I mentioned in the sales thread, I did not bid mainly because I was not familiar with most of the coins, the one I thought I knew something about seemed priced very high that I figured there was something about it that I was missing. ie. it was a proof, or low mintage or something I did not know. I also had some ebay auctions that I was bidding on at the same time (and won, yay!) so I was flipping back and forth between browser tabs.
Yes, I'd second giving a reserve / fair warning - type: "items x, y, z will be withdrawn within next 5 minutes".
I guess as Australians we're not used to disclosing a 'reserve' price, but we also don't really do reverse auctions. It didn't occur to me at first that it would be a smart thing to do, but in hindsight I agree it would have been better. Disclosing reserve would also let people know if the item would possibly sell within someone's price range and therefore not waste their time if it won't. But I guess that's the same as a regular auction.
I found it a bit confusing for me to keep up with it all. The posts spanned 2 pages and when you announced another price drop I had to keep going back to page 1 and looking for specific item numbers and what price they were listed at and what was left. Then by the time I went back to page 2 for your update the price had changed again. Then 1 or 2 items that I was interested in just got cancelled like just a minute away from me buying them. Then there were some comments like, "withdrawn or sold sorry" which confused me even more? It did my head in so I said, I think I'll sit this out and go and watch the telly instead. I also think 6 PM is a bad time. People getting dinner ready, things happening at home, the evening news on at this time, kids screaming, whatever. I think 8 PM might have been better. You had some very nice items and it was your auction and you can do whatever you like. I am happy to get in on auctions anytime but this one was a bit too hard for me to follow. Please don't take any offence to what I have said here as I am only one person and probably not the sharpest pencil in the box, it might be just me being a dense. Cheers and good luck.
Missed it, due a bbq at the time. My thoughts, maybe every 5 mins, or every 15 mins and therefore over a longer period than an hour. Was in the middle of typing when the above post came in. Agree, the thread length even seeing it not in real time make it difficult, and I opened 2x browser windows. In any case I hope you got largely what you were seeking from an interesting stack for sale.
Thanks this is excellent feedback. I think I can agree to all of your points. Hopefully if someone else does a reverse auction in the future this will help them
I agree with this too - I should have checked other auction times to get an idea of a good time to conduct it. Plus not being able to pre-bid meant it was difficult for people to get exact timing right. Thread length could be greatly reduced by the auctioneer (me) not posting so often... people could just bid with a time + item and that would be fine.
Like yourself @Dogmatix and others here, I find the concept of reverse auctions quite interesting. I must agree that the 1 minute thing was a bit hectic. Would have been a nightmare to administrate.....Was fun to watch though..lol. The following is just thinking aloud.... List an item(s) at a particular starting price. List the beginning and finish times, x number of days ect. Then at random times you drop the prices by random amounts.This allows you to effectively set a reserve minimum, because you'll never drop below what you want. I've always wondered what impact this would have on buyer behaviour. I'd be thinking do I take it now, or risk missing the next price drop.... Just a thought
