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Subject:Re: This vase sold for 43000 USD - What's the deal with it?
Posted By: Madria Fri, May 17, 2024
Dear Robert,
I think you are spot on with the media hype. In regard to the second part of the question I can offer a few comments based on my long-time monitoring of the site and the individual houses. The platform has a great influence on the auction houses that advertise there. This also affects pricing. Basically, everything there is consignment goods and most auction houses have completely dispensed with floor auctions. The consignors hope for a good deal, but also want a quick and easy-to-understand sale, which is the platform's promise. But the company sends middlemen to put pressure on the auction houses so that they put pressure on the consignors to consign with the lowest possible limit. This automatically ensures greater attention, more website visits and more bids. Auction houses should then sell the lower limit prices to the consignors with the promise of a bidding war, as actually happened here. The auction houses profit from the bidding war, but also from the low sale price, because they still charge fees on everything: photo costs, lot fees etc. and of course the premium that they collect from buyers and sellers at the same time. They always win, provided the item is sold. The platform wants to grow, so it puts pressure on auction houses to describe less and list more items instead.
Expensive experts are often not necessary in the eyes of the platform. The platform then makes money from the horrendous and unnecessary transport costs. The site is a rising star in the field of e-commerce and they only need to attract more auction houses and grow and get more traffic and customer data to become even bigger. Consigning there carries the risk for customers that the description of their goods will be of low quality. But as long as the site continues to grow, it doesn't matter. As long as enough eager eyes from speculative buyers and Sunday bidders without access to reference works and comparison options are willing to bid on items, it is still worthwhile for the consignors. Who really suffers is the reputation of experts and the obligation of auction houses as repositories of knowledge for future research. However, this also means that many incorrect or low-quality items fall through the cracks that would otherwise have been discarded. And the bidders usually see the difference, so that a lot is sold off, but the good lots become flagships for the platform and, thanks to the hype and wide distribution, lead to more visitors to the website and thus to more purchases. In my eyes, this is all a well-thought-out plan – so not to use the word "scheme".
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