A Message From REA

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To everyone involved in last night's auction as a bidder, consignor, or observer:

In short, we're sorry. Words cannot begin to express the level of frustration that we experienced here at REA, and we know that the same frustration was felt by all of you as you sat down to the auction. It's incredibly disappointing when something doesn't go as planned, especially something that routinely brings great enjoyment to collectors. For that we apologize. We consistently strive for a high level of service and we didn't meet that last night.

I can tell you that we work incredibly hard to deliver the best auctions to the hobby twice, and soon to be three times, a year. We have invested in tremendous people and incredible infrastructure, and last night our IT infrastructure disappointed us and all of you. Despite rigorous testing, we encountered a number of issues at various times throughout the final night. Without getting into too much detail, I can tell you that this was not a bandwidth issue. We know very well what type of traffic to expect, and we build around that, including buffers for when traffic hits multiples of the expected load. Despite the very best planning, these things happen. We've all heard of Wal-Mart's site going down on Black Friday or the IRS site crashing on tax day. These are not planned, and they have to be worked through.

We are not computer experts, and we rely on a team of administrators, programmers, and developers, along with their countless resources, to make sure that things work. When they don't work, we rely on these same people to diagnose and correct any issues that arise. Last night, we were relying on the best available information and the best available advice from these experts and others that we consulted. Decisions were made to bring down the site temporarily around 9 PM to initiate a fix. While it worked for many, we understand that it didn't work perfectly for all.

This is the definition of an imperfect situation because there is no one-size-fits-all solution. For every person who is intently focused on a single item, there is another who has been diligently tracking several dozen. For every person who sets an Honest Auto Bid Sunday evening, there is another who wants to manually place his last bid. There are buyers and consignors on both sides of the coin, and decisions have to be made that are believed to be in the best interest of all.

Extending initial bidding was a necessity due to the timing of the first outage to the site. With this, we are confident that we were able to accommodate nearly everyone who wanted to qualify. The auction opened October 5, and with a record number of bidders involved, we're sure the 23 days of initial bidding was sufficient despite the short outage near the end. We handled scores of phone calls during that outage and manually took bids over the phone and via e-mail from concerned bidders, ensuring that we were able to enter them prior to the initial bidding deadline.

The decision to extend the end of the auction is something that we reserve the right to do when we feel it cannot responsibly be ended as planned. Thankfully, this is an option we've never had to exercise until last night. Again, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. The extension caused some great displeasure because they were winning an item or had an item at a good price while others were hugely frustrated because they couldn't get back in to update bids. We made what we believed was the best decision given the situation, and we tried to keep bidders informed as best as possible through e-mails, a fully staffed phone bank, and posts on the board so that they were not in the dark. The additional extensions were made until we could determine that the site was offering uninterrupted access for the overwhelming majority of people for a reasonable amount of time. In our opinion, this was the best way, in light of the undeniably frustrating situation, to end the auction. Pausing the auction or extending it another day, in our opinion, would have led to more confusion and could have worsened the situation. There was literally no perfect solution, despite many thrown around and considered. We made the decision that we did, and we stand by it acknowledging that there are some who disagree. We ask for your faith that we considered all the available information and tried to do what we thought was best.

I want to acknowledge my team in the office who handled themselves with great poise and ability in the face of this situation, and I know many of you spoke to them upon calling into the office. Dean, Tom, Calvin, Bob, Michael, and Paul were doing their best to communicate information, assist bidders, and maintain calm. They did a great job despite being subjected to unbelievable verbal abuse from some customers. Some of the e-mails and phone calls we received last night are among the worst I've ever seen or heard in any situation, and they certainly had no place in sports card auction environment regardless of how frustrating things were getting. No one wanted this to happen less than we did.

We've waived all shipping charges for this auction, which was set to implement a new cost structure for shipping, handling, and insurance. We are already packing and shipping, and will be getting orders out and consignor checks mailed with the same speed you've always known. We are already digging deeply into the situation to ensure this never happens again in any fashion. We appreciate everyone's participation last night, their patience, and their understanding that we tried at every step to make the best decisions. We look forward to putting this behind us and delivering another blockbuster auction in March 2019 that everyone can be excited about and enjoy at the same level they've always known with REA.

Brian