QuiBids

Trying out yet another auction site - for buying,  not selling. (http://www.QuiBids.com) Very interesting - you pay for every bid you make, so the effort is to find a strategy to bid as little as possible. Here's what I've figured out so far:

• wait to bid until something you actually want comes up. Makes it worth the time you'll need to actually get it, and it means that if you lose the auction, you won't mind paying the full price plus shipping. (They even recommend this.)


• don't bother with the voucher style bids...they cost a little less to buy, but once they're gone, they're gone. With regular style bids (you buy them...they're $0.60 apiece) the site subtracts what you bid from the full cost of the item if you don't win it, and offers an identical item to you at that lower cost. You don't get a bargain, but it minimizes loss - the gift cards (which I highly recommend as a training option) are particularly good . You might have to buy the card if you lose the auction, but the shipping charge is minimal, and you get the money you bid back to spend as you want.


• unless you're prepared with many hundreds of bids and a lot of spare hours, don't even bother with the real high ticket items like iPads and such. High PRICED items often go for very little, but high STATUS ones go way up and take a long time to stop. If you're determined, wait until the high status item is at least at 80% of what the next highest winner paid. Then you might have enough bids to win at reasonable cost.


• Do not scatter bids hither and yon, or wander away once you've started bidding on something. You might as well throw money out the window. This is not eBay.


• Don't bid right away on any item. Wait until the clueless run out of money. The exception to this guideline would be in the middle of a workday - the number of people bidding is much lower, and high priced items often go for pennies.


• In fact, don't bid at all except when the timer is at 1...on anything! And then stick with it. Every bid posted gets 10 to 20 seconds added to the clock, so there's no reason to bid anything at 8 seconds or 3 or even 2. And if the timer jumps back up, don't bid...someone else did it for you. The only thing I would recommend is to click "Bid" AS SOON AS the timer gets to 1 - I've lost a couple expensive auctions now by waiting just a split second too long.


• Watch yourself. When you're winning, move your mouse away from the Bid button. I've bid myself up a couple times by accident. (the timer was at 1, so I clicked...duh! I might have won it if I hadn't clicked.)


• Check the history of the item before you even start (there will be an identical one tomorrow, don't worry.) What was the price range it sold for? WHEN during the day or night did it sell? Is the price related to the time of day? (In many cases it is...middle 5 hours of a workday is the absolute best, at least for the things I've been looking at.)


• Make certain you have enough bids...you don't want to have to buy more in the middle of an auction.


• If there is more than one "Bid-o-matic" active, don't bid at all. If there's only one active, bid only (at 1 or 2 seconds) when the Bid-o-matic is currently winning.


• The most likely auctions to win are those where only one or two other people are still bidding, and they're smart enough to wait until the last seconds on the timer. If you're focused, you can outlast them. The ones where idiots are bidding at 10 or 15 seconds might be worth watching, but don't click "Bid". Remember: the goal is the FEWEST bids, because you're paying for them. The actual "price" of the auction is usually very low, but also completely irrelevant - FEWEST NUMBER OF BIDS is your goal to save money.


• If your bid total is approaching the item value, stop bidding when you get to the item value MINUS the shipping charge - you'll still be able to buy it, but you won't exceed the MFRP plus shipping. For God's sake, don't spend bids worth more than the item is worth.

What's it worth? Who will buy it?

Attended a very interesting auction yesterday (J. Pandur) - lots of good china and collectibles, good atmosphere, some great deals. Wacko prices, though - the sheer range was astonishing. Someone purchased an empty cardboard box for $400 just because it had a picture of Hopalong Cassidy on it. On the other hand, someone else walked out of there with about 20 antique windup wall clocks for $20 each. I was looking for bargains - and I don't know much about clocks - so I didn't bid very often, but I did get some blue Willow china, a few pieces of depression glass, and a cool metal condiment server with 6 etched glass carafes. Let an entire set of Noritake dinnerware go for $20 to someone else because I didn't know the pattern and I don't have room for it in inventory, though.

I go hot and cold on inventory. There are days when I think I should just buy good quality things as they come up and store them until the right person comes along to buy. Other days I look around and think "Enough! Let's get this stuff out of here!" Some compromise, I suppose...6 months? A year? I was about to take all the big china sets to a high end auctioneer and get rid of them last week, and then someone ordered several pieces through the website.

OK. I'll hold on to them a little longer...someone might need them.

--Gail

Ebay changes

I have closed my Ebay store. I had been considering that action for some time anyway, but now that they've further damaged the feedback system and want to charge even more to sell, I'm out of there. I participated in the initial Ebay boycott with a number of other sellers (despite the increasingly shrill rhetoric), but then figured that I might as well go elsewhere altogether and give Ebay some competition. Found a couple good alternatives, too. UPDATE: NeoLoch is no longer an auction site - they now sell various electronics. One is NeoLoch.com, a brand new site with no listing fees - only opened in late February of this year (so some initial bugs and growing pains) - but there's something interesting about making a bet on a real new business. Also joined www.onlineauction.com, which charges a flat fee per year, not per item. I'll be listing some things there, too.

Mostly, though, I'll be improving and upgrading my gailsfinechina.com website (UPDATE: now closed). Signed on with Mal's E-commerce for a shopping cart, and applied to the post office for access to their shipping calculators.

--Gail

A patch of warm air

An older man, confusing me with someone else, said,
"Oh, you're so pretty. I know you. You work at the bar down the street."
Ability, education, experience sat up and looked around, startled.
"I work at a big company, in T-town," I stuttered.
"You're so pretty." He squeezed my arm. "I've seen you here before."
And again
He was so happy, smiling. Delighted shiny words.
Finally I smiled back.
Clear atmosphere, light heart, dusty boxes like raw gemstones.
Everyone needs to hear "pretty" now and then.

--Gail

Welcome!

One of my favorite pastimes is going to auctions. I view it like other people view movies: drama, interesting characters, a storyline, changing scenery, suspense, the background music of the auctioneer's chant. Best, I get to take stuff home, often at absurdly low prices.

Selling those auction finds eventually turned into a business (Gail's Fine China Collection), and I will certainly mention any exceptionally cool finds, but mostly I expect to tell stories about the auctions themselves - who goes there, who wins and loses, who got the staggering bargain or bought the oddest thing. A lifelong interest in science fiction may schedule some of these stories in outer space, but then...what planet are you from?

Come along for the ride.

--Gail