Building better markets instead of chasing perfect prices
Let’s talk about something every auctioneer thinks about: Are we actually finding true market value?
I had an interesting conversation recently with a colleague about whether auctions reveal what something’s really worth. Sure, they can. But here’s what bothers me. We’re calling it “true market value” when maybe 5–10% of potential buyers ever see our marketing. How’s that the true value?
This isn’t just theory. It creates real problems.
Take used equipment sales. The same machine can bring wildly different prices depending on who’s selling it. A specialized dealer with an established buyer list? They’ve got a huge advantage. Their marketing hits the target every time. They know exactly where their buyers are. But a first-time seller? They’re throwing everything at the wall hoping something sticks. The result: massive price variations for identical assets.
The obvious answer is to spend more on advertising. But that’s just throwing money at the problem, not solving it.
Smarter, Not More
We need smarter marketing, not more marketing. This means understanding where your buyers actually spend their time and meeting them there. Good strategy can definitely improve your reach. But even the best traditional approach hits a ceiling. Budgets, timelines, and market inefficiencies limit what we can achieve.
So if small improvements aren’t enough, we need to think differently.
There’s this concept from Google’s Larry Page about “10x Thinking.” Instead of trying for 10% better, aim for ten times better. Applied to our industry, we stop asking “How can we reach a few more buyers?” and start asking:
“How could we reach 10 times the right buyers for the same cost?”
“What would narrow that value gap by 10 times?”
These questions force you out of the standard playbook. For Grafe, this has meant moving away from paid advertising toward building an organic community. We’re creating an audience that trusts us first and buys second, rather than constantly renting attention in the marketplace.
Fish Where the Fish Are
Charlie Munger had it right: “Fish where the fish are.”
Maybe the answer isn’t being a slightly better fisherman in the same overfished pond. Maybe it’s finding your own lake. Build a dedicated community in your niche, and you create your own market. True market value becomes less of a ghost to chase because you’ve built a place where value is consistently understood and realized.
The bottom line: We might never achieve perfect market saturation. But by building trusted communities and targeting the right buyers intelligently, we can get a lot closer to real value discovery than the current spray-and-pray approach most of the industry uses.
What market are you fishing in? Are you competing as a better fisherman, or building your own lake?