Auction
January 2022
Despite what some claim, the internet has not changed any rules of economics, but it has massively increased the size of the marketplace for both buyers and sellers. No venerable industry has grasped this more readily than one of the oldest: auction houses.
There are hundreds of them dotted all over the UK; week in and out they act as clearing houses for unwanted goods of all sorts. They have always been effective at packing in the bidders; in the nineteenth century some auctioneers laid on transport and booze; then came telephone bids and now the internet. The technology to broadcast auctions live online has been around for 20 years and is now almost universal, even at the smallest sales.
The auction still takes place in a room chock full of furniture, china, toys, silver, books and who knows what else; the auctioneer still sits on a rostrum with a gavel. The difference is that as well as the buyers in the room, the auctioneer is watching a computer showing bids made in cyberspace, which are treated as if they were in the room.
One regional auction house I spoke to told me that half their lots are now sold to internet bidders, and the proportion has been growing. Online bidders are from all over the world, as an auctioneer will often proudly point out.
Sometimes you see the auctioneer working, but you always hear them, and see the catalogue entry and pictures of what is being sold. This hybrid of the real and online worlds works well. It seems that we need the presence of the human auctioneer, cajoling and persuading, to lend a little urgency and, to some extent, entertainment to proceedings. So much more fun than the sterile worlds of eBay and Amazon.
From the buyers’ perspective, it also offers the priceless ability to set up searches of hundreds of catalogues automatically. If there is a particular painter or vintage toy that you crave, the online platforms will scan all the catalogues daily, and email you if something you might want appears. Two of the biggest, the-salroom.com and easyliveauction.com have over 1,000 auction houses on their books between them in the UK alone and they each offer this service entirely free.
I recently bought a painting this way; alerted by the-saleroom.com, I looked at it online, bid online, paid online, organised the shipping online and it’s now hanging on my wall. The shipping cost more than the painting, but it was much cheaper than an 800-mile round trip to Truro to bid, which I might have done 20 years ago.
An insider at an auction house tells me that the system was a godsend during lockdown; their auctions were conducted entirely online, with the auctioneers sitting in the empty room talking to themselves and feeling a bit silly, but the sales were a success. Apparently, there was initially a certain amount of resistance from some of their older clients, but many now prefer to view the items in person then bid online.
A couple of warnings:
First, bidding online may incur an extra premium, perhaps 5%+vat, on top of the auctioneer’s normal commission, which itself is usually at least 20% +vat. However, by no means all auctioneers impose this extra charge, so make sure you check before you bid.
Second, bidding online is just as much a commitment as bidding in the room; if yours is the winning bid, you are on the hook, even if you got carried away or were clumsy with your mouse.
Still, it’s a free spectator sport; there’s no need to buy a thing and it costs nothing to watch an auction. So, if you fancy yourself as bit of a Lovejoy – why not have a look?
