No one forced anyone to participate. If something didn't sell, chances are it's because it had a high reserve set by the seller. When you set a high reserve, you run the risk of having no buyers, just like in any market.
I'd say a photo fee and shipping is a low price to pay for a chance to sell something to a large audience for several times what its worth. -Yinan On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 9:23 PM, Michael Farmer <[email protected]> wrote: > It is a train wreck for the suppliers who had to pay to put the items in, > ship them from Europe and elsewhere, and pay to ship them back! > Michael Farmer > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Oct 14, 2012, at 7:21 PM, Yinan Wang <[email protected]> wrote: > >> No offense intended, but how do you interpret this auction as a train wreck? >> >> Having worked in the natural history auction industry, this was a very >> good auction for everything except the high priced pieces. From what I >> observed, the sell-through rate was probably over 80%, which is great >> for a natural history auction. Many of the lower and middle ranged >> items went for 3-10 times the market price. >> >> High priced meteorites in general don't seem to sell often at auction. >> For example, the Willamette was very well marketed last year but did >> not sell at $650,000. Looking at past auctions, it seems $90,000 to be >> the top price for a meteorite sold at auction in the past few years, >> at least with this auction house. >> >> Personally I think the market for extreme high end meteorites may not >> be well established in auction houses yet. Yes, someone will (and has) >> shell out up to 2 million for a dinosaur at auction but won't do the >> same for a meteorite. >> >> -Yinan >> >> >> >> On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Adam Hupe <[email protected]> wrote: >>> I think the timing of this auction during the middle of a political >>> campaign might account for the train wreck witnessed today or the economy >>> is worse off then anybody could imagine. Prices were all over the place, >>> some excellent, some poor but not a single item exceeded $50,000.00 even >>> with the huge buyer's premium in place. A few of my friends watched parts >>> of this auction on CNN and thought many of the descriptions should have >>> been based on the importance of the items instead of comparing them to >>> famous artwork. >>> >>> All of the big auction houses are struggling right now from what I have >>> read. Hopefully things will settle back down after the election. >>> >>> Best Regards, >>> >>> >>> Adam >>> ______________________________________________ >>> >>> Visit the Archives at >>> http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html >>> Meteorite-list mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list >> ______________________________________________ >> >> Visit the Archives at >> http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html >> Meteorite-list mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
