I've come up with a multi-faceted buyer's premium table that incentivizes live bidding, paying in cash, and of course, club membership. I'll go into a few details below.
Lowest premium is same as previous years - come to the auction in person, be a CCA member, pay in cash - 10% buyer's premium. Best value.
Highest premium - Bid remote (online), be some rando person with no club memberships, and pay by credit card - 20%. Pretty standard BP in spite of all that.
Lots of combinations in between. I'm allowing those with bona-fide memberships in affiliated hobby clubs to get 1% off their BP. It's not a lot, but hey, let's recognize support for our hobby no matter where it is, shall we? Of course, joining the CCA nets them an extra 4% discount, so...
Bona-fide clubs include those that are organized with a 501(c)3 or 501(c)7 status, have a paid dues structure, and focus on casino related collectibles, including: Silver Strikers Club, SNCC
Having an account on a website, facebook page, or other unincorporated, non-dues-paying entity will not qualify for a discount. Best to join the CCA to maximize that benefit anyway.
We're up to 157 items and I have 2 shipments coming with unknown quantities of items. I will also be perusing the list of items I inventoried from the club's storage units for donations that some club members said they made specifically to be in the auctions but were not labeled as such in storage. I'm going back to Vegas at least twice before the convention and should be able to pull everything while there.
Question: In the past, we've had 20 items in the silent auction on the show floor and ~180 items in the live auction. With post-auction work dropping by an estimated 95% due to using software to do the heavy lifting, how do you all feel about having more items in the auction? And how many? Or more specifically, how late should we let the auction run? One suggestion would be to have the live auction be for the first 200 items, and we'd just let the remaining items take place online (only). Not sure I can flip the switch to auto-pilot like that, but I'll find out if people are interested.
AUCTION IS FULL (with some exceptions and request for feedback):
My thanks to everyone who stepped up to donate lots to this year's auction. At this time, I'm considering the auction full.
HOWEVER, I would gladly make room for additional non-chip items such as silver strikes, chip sets (large/full sets, not like just one each of $1, $5, $25 chips from a casino), ashtrays, dice, slot machines, etc.
It is at this time that I would like to announce that The Atlantis Casino in Reno Nevada has agreed to donate 2 ROULETTE WHEELS to our organization to be auctioned off. I'll do one this year and one next year. These are brand new, never used wheels still in the box. They are the wheels only, not full tables. I don't believe they have the Atlantis logo. I've peeked into one box and nudged one into a slow spin (feels awesomely smooth) but haven't taken them out. I'm just waiting on Atlantis execs to provide conditions of the donation (they want to make sure we don't sell them to buyers in states that don't allow personally owned gambling devices, for instance). Once I have that, I'll pick them up, take some pics, and add one to the auction catalog. I will probably make it the last item up for bid.
I was also thinking of peppering the auction with some club items like bundles of old magazines (we will have full-year bundles of back issues for sale at the club table, subject to availability), pins, and other items. Or a 2027 convention package that would include a grab bag of 2027 stuff: show registration, 2 night stay at the SouthPoint, convention pin, Tshirt, raffle tickets, banquet ticket, etc. Do you like these ideas or does it take away from "the good stuff"?
-- barry