AH (PWCC) Reality Check Please

[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.

[BeanTown]

Leon,

I've always used auctionsniper.com and since I don't buy a lot through EBay, I have not shopped other auction sniper companies. I will look at using them in the future if free.

Brent, people were glued to their TV during the election night process. No matter who you voted for. Lisa was yelling at the TV and emotional roller coaster ride the entire night. The "champainge" bottles were opened after 3AM which by then all the PWCC auctions had closed.

Chris, did you ask Brent to stop your consignment listings? If yes ... you have a beef. If no, then you let it ride knowingly.

[Rich Klein]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

Leon,

I've always used auctionsniper.com and since I don't buy a lot through EBay, I have not shopped other auction sniper companies. I will look at using them in the future if free.

Brent, people were glued to their TV during the election night process. No matter who you voted for. Lisa was yelling at the TV and emotional roller coaster ride the entire night. The "champainge" bottles were opened after 3AM which by then all the PWCC auctions had closed.

Chris, did you ask Brent to stop your consignment listings? If yes ... you have a beef. If no, then you let it ride knowingly.

JC:

Steve did ask to stop the listings, the problem was he asked the day before the election instead of when the auction began. That is the issue I have with his complaint. By the time he got to November 7th the auction had been rolling for a while and I as the seller would not have cancelled said auction.

Now, if he had complained on the 1st day they were up then he would have a very valid point and everyone could have waited for the next auction

Rich