AH (PWCC) Reality Check Please

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

I was chatting about this thread with a fellow board member (NOT LEON) yesterday and his question was:

If you saw when the auction opened it would close on Election Day, why did you not contact PWCC to have the auction killed so it would close at a better time? Is that something possible in your contract with PWCC?

Thanks!
Rich

This. I would have been on the horn immediately. And if it didn't dawn on you until later, it's possible it didn't dawn on Brent, either.

[IMAXMAX]

I too have have noticed that card prices have been down the past coupla months (as was mentioned earlier in this thread)...
I also use a bid snipe service and really pay no attention to the closing date of an auction

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by conor912

This. I would have been on the horn immediately. And if it didn't dawn on you until later, it's possible it didn't dawn on Brent, either.

As soon as I realized this was the case I emailed Brent and told him I was concerned about this. My email and his response below:

On Nov 7, 2016, at 6:53 AM, steven napolitano wrote:

> I wish I had realized last month when I consigned these cards that my auctions were ending on election night at 10pm when everyone's going to be glued to their TV screens. Awful timing.
>
> Steve


On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 1:50 PM, PWCC wrote:

Probably a really good time to have items closing. As you say, everyone will be home and doing very little.

Brent
-Sent from mobile

[Rich Klein]

So far, you have proved the point, you noticed this the day before Election Day and yes many people did believe there was a foregone conclusion who would win (it turned out to be incorrect) and win early in the evening.

But I agree with Brent on one part of this, if you don't notice the closing date and its significance until the day before it closes, than just hope a lot of people are home with nothing to do.

Regards
Rich

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

As soon as I realized this was the case I emailed Brent and told him I was concerned about this. My email and his response below:

On Nov 7, 2016, at 6:53 AM, steven napolitano wrote:

> I wish I had realized last month when I consigned these cards that my auctions were ending on election night at 10pm when everyone's going to be glued to their TV screens. Awful timing.
>
> Steve


On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 1:50 PM, PWCC wrote:

Probably a really good time to have items closing. As you say, everyone will be home and doing very little.

Brent
-Sent from mobile

Ah, yeah. That's on him.

[Snapolit1]

Regardless of who won the election, about 50% of the American population was going to enraged with frothing mouths, and 50% of them were going to be high fiving each other and popping champagne, and something very close to 100% of them weren't on Bay looking at baseball cards.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In this device generation people multitask -- not that hard to look at ebay on your smartphone or tablet while watching the election. Again, have you looked at other cards closing around the same time to see if there was a pattern of low prices realized?

[Rich Klein]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Regardless of who won the election, about 50% of the American population was going to enraged with frothing mouths, and 50% of them were going to be high fiving each other and popping champagne, and something very close to 100% of them weren't on Bay looking at baseball cards.

NO ONE Is arguing that fact.

Again, no one is disputing Presidential Election Day is probably not the best day to end an auction. What we are noting is: YOU could have noticed the closing date when the auction began not with only one day to go. That's why it's a slight difference of opinion.

Rich

[Yoda]

No matter how you feel about PWCC, good, bad or indifferent, I think it is clear they have captured market share from traditional AH's and other Ebay auctioneers, such as Probstein.

[Beastmode]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

NO ONE Is arguing that fact.

Again, no one is disputing Presidential Election Day is probably not the best day to end an auction. What we are noting is: YOU could have noticed the closing date when the auction began not with only one day to go. That's why it's a slight difference of opinion.

Rich

++Well stated. Maybe OP can go to Oregon and protest? Portland is not far from Lake Oswego. Blame someone else for why his card sold for below VCP.

Seems a little harsh to throw PWCC under the bus on the most reputable card forum in the universe, then retaliate with a "never doing business again". With customers like this, who needs enemies.

[Snapolit1]

You are entitled to your opinion. You may have noticed that basically everyone else agree with me that this was a stupid business move.

[glchen]

I think Steve has a valid point in that the auctions should not have ended on election day. I think that was a mistake by PWCC. Again, PWCC has been in this business a long time, so perhaps they've ended auction on election days in the past, and it hasn't been a problem, but the fact that this election was so close probably moved a lot of folks from looking at ebay auctions to staring at their TV channels or surfing the internet to refresh election voting data. However, I think Brent's response was naïve. By that logic, you can also have major auctions end on Thanksgiving day because most folks are at home not doing much but stuffing themselves with turkey either.

Also, I don't think consignors like Steve could have predicted that their consignment would have ended on election day. I have seen PWCC move their auction start days a little before the auctions were supposed to begin. (Perhaps because they were running a bit behind on processing the incoming consignments or knew that a large consignment was about to arrive.) Of course, once they knew for certain that they didn't like the auction end date, perhaps they could have pushed for Brent to move the listings to the next auction.

Same thing for auctions that end past midnight EST. The problem is that PWCC has too many consignments. What was originally auctions ending over 1-2 weeks is now going on 2-3. I knew that there was something thread where Brent asked different forums what they advise he should do in these cases. Basically, they are trying to space auction close times about a minute apart. However, with so many consignments, they can't all fit in the "sweet spot" for auction close endings. It's similar on Sundays where many auctions end at before 5pm EST. Many consignors have also complained about those ending times.

With consigning items to auction, it is always a roll of the dice. If you can consign the items to a non-ebay auction house, you can always try to specify a start price with the AH at which you could at least be okay with. Val put a tremendously helpful post in this thread (#32) on all of the things that consignors should do and think about. Finally, if you are only looking to sell your items at VCP and you don't have a lot to sell, you should just list it yourself via BIN on ebay at the VCP or a little above. Folks (including myself) use AH's because they are hoping that they will be able get a price significantly above VCP. However with auctions, it is always a roll of the dice. You never know if the folks who want to buy your item are actually looking at your auction.

Finally, on election day, I bid on 10 items (via snipe) on PWCC and I won two. I think I got a decent deal on one item but the other one was near my max bid. The ones I lost went above my max bid, which basically means it was near VCP or above. For example, I wanted the Tabacalera Babe Ruth / Lou Gehrig card that sold on election day in PWCC. This was the same card that Leon had during his auction from Heritage. I basically put a snipe out for the same price the card sold for at Heritage (~1800). However, it sold for a bit more, at $1885, even though it was election day. Therefore, you can say that PWCC still had a higher realized price than a major auction house, and the seller probably netted more because PWCC didn't have a 20% BP. Again, I'm sure Leon was still very happy with how Heritage handled his consignments as some sold for huge prices. However, the point is not all items that sold on election day laid an egg.

[pokerplyr80]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

As soon as I realized this was the case I emailed Brent and told him I was concerned about this. My email and his response below:

On Nov 7, 2016, at 6:53 AM, steven napolitano wrote:

> I wish I had realized last month when I consigned these cards that my auctions were ending on election night at 10pm when everyone's going to be glued to their TV screens. Awful timing.
>
> Steve


On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 1:50 PM, PWCC wrote:

Probably a really good time to have items closing. As you say, everyone will be home and doing very little.

Brent
-Sent from mobile

Their auction schedule was probably created at the beginning of the year for the entire year. And they basically run constantly throughout the year. Should they have changed it for the election? Possibly. What about the debates? The world series? Other big sporting events?

It is unfortunate your auctions didn't bring the desired result. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that having so many people home watching the election might actually help the auction. I get my ebay alerts on my phone and would have had no trouble putting in a snipe while watching the coverage.

[Jeffrompa]

Maybe they can end some auctions on Christmas Eve . See how that goes .

[Brent Huigens]

Hi everyone. I'm sorry to the OP for not doing better on his consignment - we promise to do a better job in the future.

It's true that we made the conscious decision to continue to have items close on November 8. If we had decided to skip election day, due to the size of Auction #9, it would have pushed later items to close on the day before Thanksgiving which we know is a travel day for many people.

We need to establish a baseline, because if we start to skip dates due to unique events that may distract bidding, there could be an endless list of days that we select to skip (sporting events, award shows, popular television events, etc.). For this reason, it is our practice to refrain from items closing only on major holidays and days associated with major holidays.

On a side note, I don't think anyone could have predicted the fervor with which the American people followed the election results.

[clydepepper]

My experience with PWCC has only been as a buyer: won a few at good prices while paid too much or just missed others (including one earlier tonight).


Isn't the bottom line question for this thread-

Do you net more money consigning on EBAY at 10% or through AHs at 20%?


I cannot believe that ANY individual Auction House has as much market exposure as EBAY.

Am I wrong?



pe

[nrm1977]

On a side note, I don't understand why someone would send items to a ebay "auction house". I truly never understood that. I can understand if you don't have the time to list, ship etc but, why on earth do people do this? It just doesn't register with me.


Nick

[jfkheat]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

Isn't the bottom line question for this thread-

Do you net more money consigning on EBAY at 10% or through AHs at 20%?


I cannot believe that ANY individual Auction House has as much market exposure as EBAY.

Am I wrong?



pe

Very few auction houses charge a 20% fee to the sellers. Quite a few don't charge a sellers fee except on low value cards. Depending on the value of the card, some will give the seller a small percent of the buyers fee. James