One Auction Down, ?? To Go! Item Number: 100005 $0.00

DescriptionWhew! Our very first live auction is now history and now we can actually take time to sit back and reflect a bit on what we learned, what we need to learn and where we go from here. Being our very first auction, we had huge expectations that people would flock by the hundreds to get their hands on our terrific offerings. And more than 122 people did flock, but the numbers were less than overwhelming even though we are calling this first effort a “limited success.” We made a little money, made a number of collectors and dealers happy, and learned some valuable lessons – we think!

Based on the statistics that were provided by LiveAuctioneer.com, many people signed up for the auction – including a large number of our dedicated customers. But we also were able to see that many of the people who signed up in advance of the auction didn’t actually participate. We received a number of emails – mostly after the fact – indicating many people really did not understand how this live auction thing actually worked.

Lesson #1 – Don’t overestimate people’s comfort level with using the computer to bid at auction. Even those who did bid had a hard time understanding how the entire process worked and what they were seeing as the auction progressed. Next time, we will publish a quick tutorial on how to sign-up, how to bid and how this process is supposed to work from a bidders’ standpoint.

From a product mix standpoint, we had great success in some categories (Egyptian) and pretty poor results in others (Pre-Columbian, in general). What caused this? I have a few theories, but to be honest, we just don’t know for sure. We do know that the large San Francisco Ethnographic show was going on at the exact same time as our auction, and we did hear from a few clients that they missed out on the auction because of this. But we just do not know for sure if this was the only cause.

Lesson #2 – Review the calendar of world antiquity events to make sure our auction does not conflict with anything else going on. This, however, may be difficult because it seems that almost every week or weekend some major show or auction is happening in some category of ancient art.

And lesson #3 – Make sure we have a good mix of all cultures and do not have a disproportionate share of any one culture!

Let’s now turn to price points. For our first attempt, we were actually pretty pleased by the number of higher-end pieces that sold. We sold a fabulous royal-blue ushabti for $9000, a mummified foot for $6000 and several other pieces in excess of $5000; in fact, after the auction we sold more high-end pieces than low end. But it does appear, and probably still due in large part to the continued soft economy, our buyers were primarily interested in bargains. We know several dealers participated in the bidding/buying, and dealers are always interested in good quality at a bargain price.

Lesson #4 – Work with fellow dealer/suppliers on finding items at price-points that will appeal to a broader audience of both dealers and collectors.

I’m sure there are many more lessons to be learned here, and Teresa, Elaine and I will be working closely with the very fine group of participating dealers to review these results so we can improve our next effort. We are confident live auctions will play an important role in Artemis Gallery’s future, along with that of many other dealers of ancient art. Stay tuned - our next auction will be announced soon!

Questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you!
Bob Dodge