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Bill Menard
New member
- Aug 26, 2008
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I am interested in trying out nightly auctions here on FCB via the chat stream. What is this, you say?
Well, when AIM was all the rage some 7 or 8 years ago, I held a few AIM driven auctions. I remember posting a couple messages on the Beckett boards to see who was interested and a bunch of people sent me a message with their AIM handle asking me to IM them when the auction started. So I did this and got about 20-25 people into the chat room and I held "going once, going twice, gone," auctions, very successfully.
I kept tabs of what sold and for how much and to whom and then sent paypal invoices out after the conclusion of the auction, got paid immediately, avoided eBay fees, and shipped immediately to the winners. It was great.
How could this translate to FCB Chat? We could set a time each night for the nightly FCB Auctions. I think this would be slow at first, but once people see that it works, I bet the draw would be quite good. It might even start to suck people in from other places. FCB Chat really doesn't strike me as anything different then AIM, so I feel we could have some success with this. But what is even better than AIM is that FCB is central to us all and we all are on here daily, so the advertising for our items could be done ahead of time. If alot of people were interested in auctioning off their stuff, we could set up a schedule each night for people and a time slot for them to run their auctions. If they don't show, we just bump up to the next person or we could simply limit it to one person per night. It can be as little or as many cards as they would like to auction off.
How it works:
The person posts a card. Bidders in the chat room bid (ONLY BID NO CHATTING!!! - can open another chat room for that since there are many "rooms"). When the bidding slows, the auctioneer says "going once!" if someone bids after this, the auctioneer gives it a few seconds to see if anyone else jumps in with a bid. If not, then he says "going once!" again, if no bids, then he says "going twice!" and if no bid happen before he says "GONE!" then that is the end of the bidding for the card and it goes to the last person who made a bid.
Quite simple really. Instant sales of your cards, no eBay, no fees, and no stress.
So, for example, I would say, Bill Menard is going to be hosting an auction in the Chat Room tonight at 7:30pm EST. The auction items will include a mix of modern day inserts, autographs, and game used, mainly from products like Bowman Chrome, basic Topps and Topps Chrome. I estimate approximately 20 items. Payments will need to be made by paypal and please only bid if you want the cards and have funds available to pay at the conclusion of the auction. Shipping is $2.00 flat no matter how many items you win.
Again - that was an EXAMPLE - it's not happening tonight!
Feedback, thoughts, reactions? Please share!!! I'm super excited about this right now and not sure why it took me so long to put two and two together to even propose this. I realize this probably needs to be considered by admin first, but I would encourage them to think about it seriously and not just hastily shoot this down. I see it as a real opportunity to grow the sites user base as people like this kind of stuff as evidenced by the demand I've seen on other sites for things like user hosted time specific "quicksales", etc.
Well, when AIM was all the rage some 7 or 8 years ago, I held a few AIM driven auctions. I remember posting a couple messages on the Beckett boards to see who was interested and a bunch of people sent me a message with their AIM handle asking me to IM them when the auction started. So I did this and got about 20-25 people into the chat room and I held "going once, going twice, gone," auctions, very successfully.
I kept tabs of what sold and for how much and to whom and then sent paypal invoices out after the conclusion of the auction, got paid immediately, avoided eBay fees, and shipped immediately to the winners. It was great.
How could this translate to FCB Chat? We could set a time each night for the nightly FCB Auctions. I think this would be slow at first, but once people see that it works, I bet the draw would be quite good. It might even start to suck people in from other places. FCB Chat really doesn't strike me as anything different then AIM, so I feel we could have some success with this. But what is even better than AIM is that FCB is central to us all and we all are on here daily, so the advertising for our items could be done ahead of time. If alot of people were interested in auctioning off their stuff, we could set up a schedule each night for people and a time slot for them to run their auctions. If they don't show, we just bump up to the next person or we could simply limit it to one person per night. It can be as little or as many cards as they would like to auction off.
How it works:
The person posts a card. Bidders in the chat room bid (ONLY BID NO CHATTING!!! - can open another chat room for that since there are many "rooms"). When the bidding slows, the auctioneer says "going once!" if someone bids after this, the auctioneer gives it a few seconds to see if anyone else jumps in with a bid. If not, then he says "going once!" again, if no bids, then he says "going twice!" and if no bid happen before he says "GONE!" then that is the end of the bidding for the card and it goes to the last person who made a bid.
Quite simple really. Instant sales of your cards, no eBay, no fees, and no stress.
So, for example, I would say, Bill Menard is going to be hosting an auction in the Chat Room tonight at 7:30pm EST. The auction items will include a mix of modern day inserts, autographs, and game used, mainly from products like Bowman Chrome, basic Topps and Topps Chrome. I estimate approximately 20 items. Payments will need to be made by paypal and please only bid if you want the cards and have funds available to pay at the conclusion of the auction. Shipping is $2.00 flat no matter how many items you win.
Again - that was an EXAMPLE - it's not happening tonight!
Feedback, thoughts, reactions? Please share!!! I'm super excited about this right now and not sure why it took me so long to put two and two together to even propose this. I realize this probably needs to be considered by admin first, but I would encourage them to think about it seriously and not just hastily shoot this down. I see it as a real opportunity to grow the sites user base as people like this kind of stuff as evidenced by the demand I've seen on other sites for things like user hosted time specific "quicksales", etc.
