Regarding the Club annual auction, I wish people would calm down and reflect fairly on this. There is too much exaggeration, suggestion of impure motives in others, needling other members, digression from the main issue and setting up of straw men (issues) to knock over.

The new rules introduced in 1998 are:
(1) very unfair to the consignor; and
(2) self-defeating for club money-raising. The club auction, nice as it is, is being deprived of rare, valuable, unique items it otherwise would have.

The 1998 (and current) rules are that no minimum or reserve is allowed. The only way the consignor can protect his item from (in his mind) not archiving its value is for him to buy it in for himself (make a final bid, I guess) AND CONSEQUENTLY PAY THE CLUB BOTH A 10% SELLERS’ FEE AND A 10% BUYERS’ FEE. (Unlike our auction, in every major auction I know of there is a reserve allowed, or a minimum bid or a nominal buy-back commission charged the consignor.)

I will give an example to show you how unfair this is. Let’s say I have an item that I think/hope is worth $1000:

Case #1 -- I think it is worth $1000 because I know others of the same chip sold for $1000. But in the Club auction it is bid up to only $475 because of a fluke, because most of the collectors who would pay $1000 for it already have the chip, because it has a small hard-to-reach group of collectors (European chip, mother-of-pearl, early token, etc.), who knows? We do know that auctions are not perfect. In the Club auction good things “slip by.” at times. So the consignor bids it in for $500. He has to pay a 10% buyers’ fee and a 10% sellers’ fee -- altogether a whopping $100. That is 10% of what he thinks the fair market value is ($100 divided by $1000 = 10%);

Case #2 -- Same facts as above, except let us say the consignor has made a mistake. He meant well, but the item is only worth $500. He does not know this and so bids it in for $500 as above. He must pay the Club $100. This time we can calculate the fee as 20% of the chip’s value (that is, $100 divided by $500 value equals 20%).

Either way, the $100 seems quite harsh. I think the rule should be something like this :

(a) the Club auctioneer or committee agree with the consignor on an estimated value of the item, and the auction start at a minimum bid of 66 to 80% of that value. If it does not get a bid, the consignor is charged a nominal amount (say, $5 plus the mailing cost to return it to the consignor).; and

(b) if the auctioneer (or committee) and the consignor can’t agree, and the consignor wants to list it anyway, and the auctioneer agrees, the consignor pay the club 5% of the minimum bid if it does not receive a bid.

Robert