Mammoth Blog

Most babyboomers grew up with going to the old fashioned farm or household auctions which were held because the owners died or were moving. Do you remember the excitement of raising your hand to place a bid and the ultimate excitement of the auctioneer's hammer hitting the desk and "SOLD" it was yours. Well the same feeling can be recaptured for all generations to enjoy on the online auction sites. Placing a bid on something you have just got to have and waiting for the gavel to go down and now YOU own it or you will as soon as you pay and the seller sends it to you.

EBay and other sites started out with this same level of excitement over a decade ago and having been a buyer back in 1998 on eBay I spent hours watching (many of the auction did not even have photos) for the auctions to end to see if I got it. Unfortunately Ebay ahs chosen to go to the fixed price model and is looking to emulate the success of Amazon.com and uBid.com. This selling philosophy entails selling many of the same new merchandise at a fixed price. Yes many of the items will be cheaper than what can be found in the "brick and mortar" marketplace however by the time you add shipping the final price is quite comparable. The auction on the other hand is the only way that antique and vintage merchandise should be sold as the marketplace sets the value and in most cases it may be at a higher price than expected, plus the need to act immediately to get it or it may never be seen again is quite persuasive to encourage bidding.

I am what is called a boutique seller and have sold on eBay for over eight years.About 99% of the auctions I listed were antique and vintage costume jewelry and have always done quite well having gross receipts of up to $10,000. month on no more than 800 (some are relists) auction up during the same month. My average percent to toal of auctions sold was between 50-65%. I never sold with a buy-it-now or fixed price and found that many of my auctions got very high bids within the last few minutes and even seconds of the auction end. This is because the items are one if kind and harder to find and the buyers do not want to possibly miss out on getting it. If however the same merchandise had been set up as Buy It Nows or at a fixed price within an eBay store probably my monthly gross receipts would not have been over $5,000. and with only a 15-25% of the total auctions would have sold.

All in all if you are selling one of a kind antique and vintage merchandise and am interested in making money and having quick turnover with the ability to keep your merchandise fresh, the answer lies in the auction format. Oh yes continue>>>