Thanks everyone for coming to the auction and especially Silas for helping out. You can read an interesting customer account of the great finds on this boardgamegeek discussion thread.
We're continuing to work on the auction process. I wasn't there, which is an internal debate itself, but I think we were a bit understaffed. We'll fix that next time. We're also fine tuning auction formats, and from the feedback so far, we need to streamline and speed things up. We're listening to feedback on this, so let me know if you have thoughts.
Prices were a bit higher this time. I think this reflects a few factors: First, we're getting better at ascertaining "true" values of games. Second, we had the staff time to do this research and spend many hours preparing the auction items. The biggest factor is we're at the beginning of the convention season, so we're not in such a hurry to "dump" items as say, an auction in October. Whatever doesn't sell will go to conventions over the following months. Honestly, when I hear customers say they bought a game, but grudgingly because the price was just good enough, that's mission accomplished for me. Failure is a store room full of unsold games and that's certainly not the case.
It would also be failure (for the store and the community)if everything sold, but there wasn't enough profit for BDG to justify continuing the event.
ReplyDeleteThe auction was great and I was very pleased to take part. I think the auction format absolutely needs to speed up. I don't have a problem with auctions going long as I've sat in game auctions that went for 9 or 10 hours, but they were filled with 600+ auction lots. The BDG auction had far, far fewer games to sell in live format but took a considerable amount of time. There were too many 15 minute breaks for starters. With less breaks more things can be auctioned in far less time. This isn't just an impatient request either, by the mid to late auction many folks just lost interest and left. If you have too many 15 minute breaks you loose your captive audience and they filter away between breaks. That would be my biggest suggestion for future auctions. I would also recommend possibly changing around the location of where the auction is held so you can store, quickly access, and auction off the items being sold a little easier. The storage area was on the opposite side of where the auction table was. Other than those points I think the auction went well enough. No major problems with the auctioneering itself, the descriptions, the crowd, or the folks running it. The only other thing I might suggest is to intermix more customer items and store items together to get more variety, and to give less descriptions on each game to save on time a little. A quick synopsis and overview and BANG, sell it. :)
ReplyDeleteAt live game auctions I have seen, there is very little description, except perhaps salesy sort of description.
ReplyDeleteBetrayal at House on the Hill - you explore an old house, one of you becomes the bad guy, and tries to kill all of his old buddies. What's not to love? Bid now, bid high!!!
or something.