eBay Evangelist: Living Large, Bidding Live!

Quiz: What's more fun than finding the item of our dreams on eBay? Winning? RIGHT! More fun though - is live bidding. eBay's model was based on the live auction. Now there are more and more opportunities to bid on select auctions LIVE. These auctions bring classic auction action to the masses like us. Butterfield's Kiss auction was one of the first, but since the technology is getting better by the day - so are the auctions.
The breadth of merchandise available to regular folks widens immensely at these auctions. Recently, I attended the James Cagney Estate Auction along with 50,000 other Internet bidders on www.iBidLive.tv. The first hour was also broadcast live on the PAX TV network, which gave you the feeling of really being there in person.

Ever since I was a kid and watched Yankee Doodle Dandy, I admired Cagney. He became an American Icon, winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian award, from President Ronald Reagan in 1984 for his contributions to his fellow Americans through his lifetime work. Believe it or not, the award was part of the auction. It sold for $45,000 - the winner also had to pay a "hammer fee" of 15% (the auction house commission) rounding out the bid to a smooth $51,750.

There was an amazing group of old Hollywood ephemera in this auction: Letters from Joan Crawford, Jack Warner, Cagney's old tap shoes, his 1961 Bentley ($56,000 plus a 10% hammer fee - they give you a break when your bid is over $50,000), autographs, stills - just awesome stuff! Many of the items sold for under $1,000, bringing them into a more reasonable price level.

The one thing in the auction that didn't meet it's reserve price was James Cagney's Oscar. The Academy Award was given to Cagney in 1942 for his role as the patriot showman George M. Cohan in "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and is one of a finite number that will ever be offered for sale. Ever since 1949, recipients have to sign an agreement that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has first rights on any sale of the statuette for $1.

"It was the one exception to the overwhelming success of the sale, since the rest of the auction tripled the pre-sale estimate of lots sold," wrote Louis Webre of Doyle New York in a recent email. The auction was quite remarkable, it grossed $480,671 against a pre-sale estimate of lots sold of $138,800-199,450. Thirty-nine of the 155 lots were sold to Internet bidders.

eBay's Butterfields is taking a slightly different tack. Rather than catering to us with mere pop culture taste, Butterfields is upping the ante by bringing auctions of distinction to the Internet. Their first foray, after the KISS auction, was "Treasures from the Hoi An Hoard." It featured the most important discovery in Southeast Asian ceramic art history, the recently-discovered cargo of a late 15th/early 16th century Vietnamese shipwreck.

It may not be an exciting sale to some of us, but to the high brow art crowd, this was a winner. Adam Gross, of Butterfield's Fine Arts Department said, "Through a ground breaking collaboration between Butterfields and England's Oxford University, we have been able to offer, for the first time in a live auction format, antiquities of this caliber."

Plenty of bidders were online to catch their piece of Asian history; the auction in October grossed $2.8 million. EBay/Butterfields followed this up with auctions of Vintage Disney Film and Hollywood Posters, entertainment memorabilia, American, Latin American, & European Prints and Contemporary Prints. An excellent variety of items for all buyers!

Butterfield's is working out the kinks, trying all the bells and whistles to enliven these sales. They even attempted a live audio stream of the auction. Unfortunately this was annoying rather than exciting or helpful, since it broadcast with a 15 second lag time (on a DSL connection). The auction was over before the audio auctioneer announced, "sold!"

IBidLive jumped into the fray again with a joint venture with FleetwoodOwen.com (Mick Fleetwood and Ted Owen) of London, England. The sale was conducted live from the Hard Rock Café branches in both London and New York and it featured exotic Beatles memorabilia. It was the largest sale to date for iBidLive.tv, with over 10% of the winning bids coming from United States Internet bidders.

The auction was loaded with great Beatle's stuff; autographs, photos, records, a pair of John Lennon's glasses, Lennon's 1965 Ferrari 330GT, and the jewel of the auction - John Lennon's Imagine Steinway Piano. The piano had been owned by a private collector and was displayed at the Beatles Story Museum in their hometown of Liverpool. Shelagh Johnston, curator of the museum, called it a "vital cornerstone of Beatles memorabilia, a piece of music heritage.'' It broke all records and estimates by selling for $2.08 million.

All this sounds very exciting, actually a shopper's paradise. But there are a few caveats to establish and you have to do some pre-auction homework.

• When planning to bid in a live online auction, try to plan ahead and purchase the auction catalogue via snail mail. Spending hundreds of dollars on an item represented by a thumbnail photograph may be disappointing if not foolish. Often, some of the images are not available online, and you might miss a great item. Also, if it is at all possible, try to attend a preview, where you can view the items live.



• Remember, that just like in brick & mortar auction houses, there will be a "hammer fee" or "buyer's premium." This is usually an additional 15% tacked on by the auctioneer as a profit. Be sure to check the percentages to be applied in an upcoming auction by visiting its catalog overview page. Each time you bid, be sure to mentally tack on that percentage.



• If you can't attend the auction "live online", be sure to make use of the pre-bid function available at the sites. Your bid will be read into the auction and you might even win.



• Get used to the live online bidding process by visiting iBidLive.tv's web site. They hold auctions around noon PST each day for gift certificates. These fifteen minute auctions are run in exactly the same way the big auctions are - so it's a great way to get comfortable with the system.



• Be sure your computer meets the minimum system requirements to run the live auction feed. They usually require you to have Java enabled and will explain this at the web site long before the auction.


·
• Beware of the misleading "estimate" price, listed by the auction gallery prior to sale. These low-ball prices serve as a way to draw you into the auction - thinking you'll get a real deal and also allow the auction house to say that the "auction tripled the pre-sale estimate of lots sold." Sound familiar? For an auction house to get quality stuff to sell, they have to convince the current owners of the merchandise that they excel at getting top dollar for the items up for sale. As in any auction, know what the item is really worth ahead of time, and know what you're willing to pay for it.