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How to Find Great Live Auctions for Resale Items

Hi, my name is Walt. I’m an auctioneer with 25 years of experience in the auction business and licensed in the state of MA. I own Quick Auction Service, a company that specializes in building and running custom auctions, I’m also the webmaster of my own site and have been on eBay for 8 years. Besides eBay, the types of auctions I run most frequently are antiques and on-site estate auctions, although I’ve run everything from business overstock auctions to charity & special event auctions.

I enjoy sharing my knowledge and stories of the auction business. My goal for article is to help folks get the absolute most out of their auction experience.

Whether your fresh out of the package or a seasoned dealer I think I can offer something in this article to help you with your auciton adventures.

There may be as many reasons to attend auctions as there are types of auctions to attend. Maybe you want to attend an auction to buy items for re-sale on eBay, or some other market. Maybe you want to furnish your home with wonderful antiques, or you want to furnish your home as inexpensively without sacrificing quality.Some folks are just looking for a fun night out. With a little perseverance all these things are possible.

There are antiques and estate auctions, auto auctions, overstock auctions, absolute and no reserve auctions, real estate auctions, specialty auctions where only one genre of items are sold, tailgate auctions, live auctions, online auctions, sealed bid auctions, silent auctions, charity and fund raising auctions and many more.

Can you really buy for pennies on the dollar at an auction? You bet! Many times I’ve seen folks buy and re-sell at the same auction on the same night for a good profit, although be advised, this should only be done after the auction is over.

There are a lot of ways to find an auction, but here are some tips on how to find and attend the best ones.

Visit the genre of shops in the area that apply to the type of auction you want to attend. IE: If your looking for a good antique auction to attend, stop in the local antiques shops and ask for what there are for good auctions in the area. Sounds obvious right? But listen to what they don’t say as well as what they do say. Oftentimes when a dealer speaks poorly about an auction he or she attends, it may be likely that they are trying to keep a good thing secret. Think for a moment, why would a dealer keep attending a lousy auction?

Newspaper ads: I personally like to find ads in the classified ad section rather than flashy display ads. Flashy ads are usually indicative of an auction that will be high priced, may have reserves, (a set price on an item), and usually an enormous crowd. While any auction can be profitable to attend, it is usually best to steer clear of the glitzy ones, at least for the beginner.

Here’s the minimum you want to find out before you go. If there is a phone number in the ad, call and ask for the terms of the sale. What forms of payment do they accept? Is it an absolute auction? An absolute auction is one that has no minimum or reserve bids on items. These are the best auctions to attend! Is there a buyers premium? A buyers premium is like a tax that everyone who makes purchases at that auction must pay above the winning bid price. Most auctions these days do charge a buyers premium, 10% is not unreasonable but I feel much more than that is greedy, and the auctioneer that charges over 10% is counting on most bidders not doing the extra math as the bids quicken in pace.

A fair auction will have ample time to inspect the merchandise, usually at least 2 or 3 hours. Find out when inspection starts and make sure to attend! Never attend an auction if you can’t make the inspection, not unless your prepared to gamble. Most auctioneers sell at a rate of about 100 items per hour, which is why they sell “as is”. They simply don’t have the time to give a detailed description of all the items. Since almost all items at auction are sold AS IS, there are sure to be some damaged, refinished, fake and incomplete items at any given auction. Beware of any auctions that offer very little or no inspection time.

Good auctions will usually have 150 to 400 lots. A lot may be one item or a group of items. The exception to this are specialty auctions, auto auctions, real estate auctions etc.

When you attend your first sale, take note of the 1/2 dozen or so dealers that buy the most often. See if you can find out about other area auctions they attend.

When you do find an excellent auction, attend it as often as possible. By frequenting good sales, you help increase the bottom line of that business. It’s difficult for many auctioneers to keep the quality of merchandise consistent, so good attendance certainly helps. And when an auctioneer gets to know you as a buyer, he/she will go out of the way to accommodate you, to keep you coming back.

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Did the Bank Bailout Help Small Businesses?

Just as owning a home was assumed to be a positive financial strategy for individuals, small companies owning commercial real estate was typically seen as a routine and constructive piece of their commercial financing during the period leading up to the most recent financial crisis. Both of these assumptions start to fall apart very quickly when it is difficult or impossible to obtain the underlying real estate loans from banks. Real estate continues to be a major component of the overall economy, and ongoing difficulties involving either obtaining or refinancing commercial mortgage loans presents severe problems for both societal economics in general and small business economics in particular.Did the Bank Bailout Help Small Businesses?One of the primary arguments made in favor of bailing out banks in 2008 was that it would permit the restoration of “normal financing” to businesses of all sizes everywhere. Seven years later most small businesses are still waiting for bailout funding to “trickle down” to them. Working capital loans and commercial mortgages are missing in action for many commercial borrowers.Real estate has regularly been in economic news for both good reasons and bad reasons during the past several decades. Starting around 2005, concerns began appearing about the financial health of both real estate and the overall economy. What we did not know at the time was that banks began making speculative investments in financial derivatives tied to real property at about the same time. Some of these investment practices produced massive losses that precipitated the public banking crisis emerging in 2007 and resulting in a widespread bank bailout program in 2008. Even the few instances in which these derivatives produced profits for the banks proved to be controversial because the profitable investing was frequently at the expense of banking customers.Zombie Banks and Troubled BanksHere are two of the real estate and banking problems that are still very actively impairing the small business economy:

Zombie Banks are still operating – a Zombie Bank is one with a negative net worth (liabilities exceeding assets).

The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) Troubled Banks List still has more than 200 banking institutions on the list.
It is worth noting that the FDIC does not publicize the problem bank list or name specific banks on the list – probably fearing a “run on the banks” if they did so. The recent “bank holiday” in Greece illustrates how quickly bank depositors can lose confidence in banking institutions. But the FDIC does release the number of banks on their troubled bank list on a quarterly basis. For example, the March 2015 total of problem banks as defined by the FDIC was 253. In comparison, the total was more than 850 banks at the peak of the recent financial crisis – but there were less than 50 troubled banks before the 2008 bank bailouts.What to Do When Banks Say NoSmall business owners must draw their own conclusions about the current financial health of banks, but it seems unlikely that a “Troubled Bank” will be able to make a “normal” level of small business loans. If banks are still saying “No” to routine commercial financing for creditworthy small businesses, what is the recommended response? Small business owners should actively review alternatives that include non-bank financing, reducing business debt and increasing sales with cost-effective solutions such as business proposal writing. At some point the practical need to fire their bank and banker will by necessity become one of the realistic actions by a commercial borrower in need of business financing but unable to obtain it from their current banking institution. In such a scenario, “You’re fired” can quickly become another example of life imitating art.

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Improving Your Home Based Business Efficiency

Home based business proprietors must be constantly thinking about ways to improve the efficiency of their business ventures. If you have some standardized, documented, flexible business goals and operational procedures, it is not difficult for you to achieve high levels of efficiency in your home based business.

In the absence of clear guidelines and operational procedures, your employees or team members will do things differently and your business will be unorganized with your work being done on an ad hoc basis. Your business will run much more efficiently if you simply put in place a standardize set of operational procedures. This is best done prior to actually putting your business in operation.

At the same time remember to use caution in not making your procedures to elaborate and specific, otherwise, you risk having your employees and team members take shortcuts to minimize their work. Shortcuts if planned and dovetailed into a standard operational plan could increase efficiency, however, shortcuts which are simply put into action on an ad hoc basis generally only serves the interests of the individual employee and may actually sabotage the team efforts causing serious problems within the company.

This article is intended to help you to develop some suitable and easy to use procedures that may enhance the overall efficiency of your home based business.

Understanding:

It is imperative that successful businesses follow a set of standardized rules and policies. Setting up these rules can be accomplished by analyzing each and every aspect of your business very closely. Primarily you will need to have a clear understanding of the job function of each team member including yourself before developing your rules and operational procedures.

Productivity is critical to the success of your business. To achieve productivity requires team work to insure a smooth start to finish accomplishment of the entire project. To maintain efficiency and to maintain good employee relations, you will need to implement a feedback system so that team members can identify operational problems and get credit for their input. A happy work force will increase the efficiency of the business ten fold compared to an unhappy disgruntled work force. Careful study and attention to daily operations will help you to identify problem areas and will allow you to fine-tune the procedures in a timely fashion thereby enhancing the efficiency of your business enterprise.

Allow Team Member Input:

People are individuals and as such, they generally work at their own pace and style. For efficiency sake, you should allow individuals to seek their own level of involvement within the business environment as long as it achieves the overall company goals. You should allow a certain amount of flexibility and variation within the job function. You should not try to control every aspect of your employees and team members’ work by imposing strict supervision if it is not absolutely necessary.

If you allow your team and employees to primarily work at their own pace, within reasonable limits, they will enjoy their work more and will make positive contributions towards increasing the efficiency of your home based business.

Assessing Your Efficiency:

Your personal efficiency is also critical to the successful operation of your business. You should make optimum use of every minute of your workday. Review your work style from time to time and see if there is any scope for improvement. Seek out specialized supervisory training to improve your managerial skills. Attend trade shows to learn new techniques to dovetail into your business. Seek out feedback from your customers to get their perspective so that you can take corrective measures whenever required.

Being Systematic:

It pays to be systematic in your work place. To run your business smoothly you need to maintain a good filing system so that you will be able to locate specific documents without wasting time. That way you will be able to conduct your work without delays. To improve efficiency you can also delegate some work to other team members. Doing so will not only increase efficiency, it will also improve their moral by showing that you trust them to perform above their job levels. Your trust in your team will instill confidence in them.

Efficiency generally means getting your product from start to finish and delivered to your customer in a timely manner while maintaining high quality and generating customer loyalty and repeat business. Constant monitoring of your entire start to finish operation will enable you to cross-check and rule out the possibility of errors and inefficiencies in your home based business.

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