It used to be that an auction was an all day event attended by many who spent the entire day at the auction. It was a social event. Times have certainly changed. In our current world, buyers rarely attend an auction from opening item to the last item. In fact, I’d be surprised if the average auction goer spends more than a three or four hours at an auction, and many are choosing to not go at all because of other more important time commitments.
First, why is this? We all have a finite amount of time. However, in the past several years the demands on our time have increased significantly. We rush from one commitment to another. Gone are the days of a leisurely day spent at an auction. Certainly there are auctions which are the exception to this rule, but those auctions are quite few and far between.
We’ve increasingly been aware aware of this, and are becoming more sensitive to the buyer’s needs. It’s simple without ample buyers, the demand end of the supply and demand equation is severely hampered and prices drop as a result. The longer an auction takes, the more likely the crowd is to dwindle in size. I’ve often thought about conducting a simple count every half hour of number of attendees at our auctions. I’ve seen this technique used in bars and restaurants numerous times to analyze crowd sizes and optimal staffing. Application of the technique to crowd size of an auction would result in an interesting look at the trends of auction crowds, and could possibly result in fitting a crude equation to crowd size.
A seller, in contrast to a buyer, often believes having two rings results in substantially reduced prices. While I agree, it may lead to lesser prices on a few select pieces, over the course of the entire auction it leads to higher prices. Each item, on average, will have more potential buyers in a two ring auction than in a single ring auction that is over three or four hours in length. Of course, convincing a seller of this is quite difficult. In fact, I’ve yet to find more than a few sellers that are able to understand this phenomena. Sellers of course want the entire crowd to focus on each of their possessions one at a time. However, they often fail to realize that this comes at the cost of a dwindling crowd, and has severe consequences after three or four hours.
Results are almost always better when we’re able to sell in two rings for significant portions of an auction. Sadly, as auctioneers we are in the middle of the dichotomy of a seller wanting the entire crowd to see each item they have, and a buyer wanting to purchase the items they are interested in as quick as possible and without impacting their time committed lives! Simply put, auctions of over three or four hours are almost always best conducted with auctioneers selling in two rings.