New Bidders Must Read Before Bidding...

First time bidding? Great, thanks for checking us out… Heads up, online auctions can become addicting.

 

So, what exactly is going on here?

 

This is an online auction where people have asked us to sell items for them. Our auctions either take place at somebody’s home or business, or they can be held out of our building. Our warehouse sales are typically consignment (meaning come from many different people).

 

You do need to Register (click on Login/Register) to bid. Once approved, you can start bidding.

 

We manually approve all new bidders, there will be a delay (could be several hours) between your registration and when you can actually place a bid. Don’t wait until the last moments to register, we may be away from the office and you might not be able to bid in time.

 

You don’t need to register again for future auctions, just Log In with your username and bid.

 

Our auctions are “Event Based”, meaning everything shown under 1 auction profile will end about the same time on a single evening. That ending date and time are listed at the beginning of the auction in the information section.

 

Most of our auctions use a “staggered ending”. Staggered Ending means that we will close (end) Lots in a set order at a set time. We tweak the parameters based on what’s best for a given auction, but a typical structure might be “3 lots will close each minute beginning at 7 pm” which means that lots 1,2,3 end at 7:00, lots 4,5,6 at 7:01, lots 7,8,9 at 7:02.

 

We also generally employ “soft close” endings. Soft Close means that if anybody bids with less than 3 minutes remaining on a lot, the countdown clock will reset back to 3 minutes and will begin to countdown again. This prevents “snipers” (bidding at the very last second), but also more closely emulates a live auction where everybody gets a fair chance to bid until they quit or win.

 

Watchlist. The watchlist is a feature that allows you to isolate specific items that you are interested in so that you can just concentrate on those, instead of scrolling through possibly 100’s of items that you don’t really care about. Click on the blue icon that kind of resembles the CBS logo, this item is now in your watchlist which is accessible from the navigation bar.

 

On the night of the sale and once the auction starts to close, the software defaults to only showing you items that are currently “open” for bidding instead of defaulting to show you items that have already ended. If you want to revisit closed items, there is a dropdown box where you can change “open” to “all” so that you can see the closed items too.

 

Bid Increments. A bid increment is the next amount that you are required to bid in order for your bid to be accepted. Our auctions only accept whole dollar amounts ($1.00, $50.00, $505.00 not $1.23, $50.05). Bid Increments increase as the bidding progresses. Increments are at $1 intervals up to $25, then it jumps to $5 until you reach $100, then it increases $10 up through $500).

 

This auction allows you to place MAX BIDS - Otherwise known as a Proxy Bid. You may place the highest price that you are willing to pay for an item into the bidding field, the system will bid for you until you are the highest bidder and will continue to bid for you until somebody outbids you. Your bid will never exceed this amount, though it may be less if nobody has or does bid against you. (You bid $100, nobody else bids, you win for $1)

 

Sometimes you may find that you have been IMMEDIATELY outbid, it is because somebody has already placed their own higher Max Bid on that item and the software automatically placed a bid for them against you. (The current price is $3, you bid $4, but it shows that you have been outbid and must bid $5 to continue. It is because they may have bid $10 on the item 2 days ago)

 

It is possible for somebody to win at a bid that is higher than yours, but does not meet the next required interval. Meaning you place a Max Bid of $90, but somebody else had already placed a Max Bid of $91 previous to your bid. That $91 bid will stand even though the next required increment would have required an outside bidder to bid at least $95. For you to continue bidding, you will need to up your bid to $96 ($5 more than the current high bid).

 

TIE BREAKERS - When two bidders place a proxy bid for the same amount or when a straight bidder matches another bidder’s proxy bid, the bidder who placed the bid first will become the Tie Winner. (It’s good practice to round your bids up a few dollars.)

 

If you win an item, you will receive an invoice in your email (you can also access it from the website, click on Accounts, then Invoices) that tells you what all you were successful in winning.

 

Each auction will have stated “Pick Ups”. Pick Ups are when you come out and meet us to retrieve the items that you won. These again are Event Based, meaning there are scheduled days and times that are available. Each auction is different but pick ups may be “By Appointment” or they can be “Open Pick Ups”, or a hybrid of those 2. You can’t just show up at a random day or time.

 

Pick Ups by appointment require you to choose a specific time for you to arrive to pick up your items. We have been using Sign Up Genius to help us keep appointments organized. After the auction ends (after the last lot open for bidding has ended) we will post a web link at the very beginning of the auction. Click on that link, choose a time, enter your name and click on submit. Please be respectful of your chosen time, we may not be able to accommodate you if you are too early and especially, if you did not actually sign up for a slot.

 

Open Pick Ups will have posted times (for example between 10 am and Noon). If the auction has Open Pick Ups available, you do not need to notify us of your arrival time, just show up.

 

Coming to pick up items. You need to be prepared for this.

 

If you buy furniture, you need to bring strong and capable people that can carry it. If the auction is at somebody’s home, you will probably be responsible for carrying it from where we photographed it out to your vehicle and loading it yourself. If something says “second floor”, that means that YOU are carrying it down from the bedrooms. You probably should bring basic tools with you. You definitely should bring blankets and rope. Don’t come expecting help, it may not be available.

 

If you buy smaller items like glassware. Bring boxes, bring packing materials.

 

Our warehouse has ample parking, but naturally on-site pick ups will have varying amounts of parking. Be prepared to carry items a good distance, especially for auctions held in congested residential neighborhoods.

 

If you miss the Pick Up, please reach out, we definitely understand that “things happen”, that being said, you should expect us to charge your credit card for the cost of goods plus additional fees for storage and handling. For an on-site auction (at somebody’s home) with small and easy to handle items (like a toolbox or something that requires zero additional attention to transport), we will probably tack on $5 per box or lot to bring items back to our warehouse and expect you to pick them up in an expeditious manner. Furniture and lots that require packing will be MUCH more expensive to transport, easily $50 per lot or piece of furniture, depending on size and time requirements. All of these charges are subject to our discretion and basically vary on how much time and effort has been extended onto us because you did not show up as you promised to.

 

If you purchased something like a dining room set, instead of us transporting it, we may try to make alternative arrangements with you to meet you at the property (not always an option) the next day or something. We have to charge a minimum of $50 per hour (including travel times) to make this a viable alternative.

 

We retain the right to charge your card and FORFEIT your items if you don’t show up. This is especially going to be valid if you bid on a large lot of items where we feel the cost to transport far exceeds the total value. We will probably also cancel your ability to bid in future auctions.

 

Please keep in mind, the seller asked us to sell these items because they don’t want them, they don’t want to deal with them. If you bid $4 but don’t show up, everyone else would have been better off if you hadn’t bid and just let the person who only bid $3 come. It’s often not about the price, but getting the items off the property.

 

The short answer is DON’T MISS THE PICK UPS. You placed a bid, honor the agreement. ( Ask a buddy, ask your Daughter, just send somebody out to get your stuff.)

 

Another important thing about the auction is that everything we sell is sold AS-IS.

 

If we know something is not working or damaged, we will probably call it out, however, we are definitely not thoroughly inspecting items. We take a few pictures and move on to the next item. If we say that something “powered on” or “runs”, that simply means that we plugged it in for like literally 2 or 3 seconds and it seemed okay to us, it does not guarantee anything beyond that and we almost definitely did not test out any auxiliary functions. Almost everything we sell is a used item, it may or may not have all of it’s original pieces. Much of what we sell is old and used, it probably has flaws, sometimes substantial. Look at the photos, come to preview, do your own research.

 

Payments. We require you to register with a credit card, although we don’t automatically charge your card on file after the auction. This is because we accept CASH (not checks) and we waive the 5% buyer’s premium for Cash payments. A buyer’s premium is an amount added to your total (bids plus tax). If you bid $100 on a taxable item, sub total with tax may be $106.00 (6% Beaver County Sales Tax), your total for Cash is $106.00, your total for Credit Card is $111.30. You can bring payment with you, or you can pay ahead via the emailed invoice with your credit card on file.

 

Shipping. We rarely ship. Feel free to reach out if you require shipping, we very likely will decline. We definitely will not ship any jewelry, coins, silver, or gold. If we ship, we will be adding a handling fee, and honestly, it’s going to be a hefty one, please check ahead. For local bidders, we hand them their item when they arrive and they are on their way, it literally takes a minute. Shipping requires so much additional communication, procurement and purchase of packing materials, increased liability, printing out labels, the actual time to post, walking up to the Post Office, forwarding tracking info, follow up emails – it’s a lot to do it right. There would be few items where the handling charge would not be a minimum of $20 or $25, if not more. Plus, we usually will require payment by Bank Wire or Bitcoin with few exceptions.

 

Okay then, thanks for reading all of that and I think you are now ready to bid!

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