In part one of our interview with Kerry Shrives, Vice President at Skinner Auctioneers and Appraisers in Boston, she told us the Internet was a big part of Skinner's auction business - in a way, all of it. Today she reveals how eBay's closure of its Live Auctions business affected Skinner's Internet bidding and she talks about the "eBay effect" on antiques and collectibles pricing.
The integration between brick-and-mortar and online auctions didn't happen overnight, and when eBay announced that it was ending Live Auctions, Skinner was thrown for a loop. Like many other auction houses that had come to depend on eBay's service (even though as Shrives says, Skinner didn't think eBay Live Auctions "was all that good"), it was forced to develop its own Internet bidding platform.
"We realized when eBay Live Auctions was closing that it was a part of our business we didn't want to turn our backs on," she recalls. "A lot of auction houses like ours see a benefit in reaching participants who might not know about our brand. We want to utilize our brand and provide a service on our site that customers will be comfortable using."
Skinner arranged with Live Auctioneers to provide the capability for both live bidding and pre-bidding. Bidders are pre-approved, and the system is sophisticated enough to estimate the current bid price needed, based on the bids that have already been received (and without revealing the exact amount of those bids). At the same time, Skinner build its own auction platform, which is accessed on the company website and which only allows live bids rather than pre-bids.
Still, she says, although the Internet unquestionably attracts more attention for a sale, it doesn't necessarily bring about higher sale prices. "The sky is not the limit just because the Internet is there," she says. "You get more bids, but every bid is not a winning bid. You can have something estimated at between $200,000 and $300,000, and even though thousands of people have looked at it, it might still sell for $75."
This is a fact I checked myself when looking through Skinner's searchable archive of past auctions - some valuable fountain pens I coveted sold for a fraction of their true value. (As an aside, I should mention that Skinner's catalogues of past auctions are a useful source for sale prices on antiques and collectibles.)
The ability to search through past and upcoming sales is a feature Shrives herself added to Skinner's website. She is obviously comfortable with technology; she says the constant changes in Web technology keep her job continually interesting, in fact. Her background, though, is non-technical: she majored in history in College, and took a course in material culture in her senior year that sparked her interest in how objects "fit into the big picture" of a culture. She landed a job with Skinner's right out college, in 1989; later, she went to graduate school, got a master's degree in art history, and returned to Skinner's in a more prominent position. Currently she acts as a general appraiser, and heads up Skinner's lower and mid-range auction sales.
The eBay Effect on Pricing
During her career, she's seen the traditional auction and appraisal system change dramatically. The rise of eBay and online auctions has diminished the "rarity factor" of most collectibles, she says, because everyone can easily find more instances of a given object being available somewhere. "As there are more opportunities to find treasures, people are becoming more selective. It reduces the "urgency factor.""
These days, Kerry Shrives sounds cautiously hopeful when she looks to the future of online and traditional auctions.
"Certainly, parts of the market like furniture are softer, but there are real areas of strength, so that provides a balance. Items like Wedgwood ceramics that can very clearly be identified. Also items like Russian art that has a wide following but not necessarily a local following do well."
She adds that she sees online auctions continuing their growth. "It's such a good way for collectors to find what they are looking for. I think this really hit home with me when we were still using the eBay Live Auction platform and had an auction of American Indian & Ethnographic Art. We had live participants from French Samoa competing on native material being sold at Skinner in Boston and bid on via the web - they were successful and the tribal material found its way directly home without going from auction to dealer, to dealer and so on."
"When we first started doing this, people were highly dismissive about the "eBay crazies" who would ask silly questions at 2 a.m." Now, she says, Internet bids are accepted as an integral part of the sales process.
Shrives foresees further integration that allows the Live Auctioneers and Skinner online bidding systems to be combined, rather than having separate clerks to manage each system. "We've been cautious, but good material continues to bring very strong prices. Last year exceeded our expectations. I still think that brick and mortar has a real and solid place in the auction world, but with the online component, the net is just getting wider. On the whole, the Internet has been a good thing."
About the Author
Greg Holden is AuctionBytes Contributing Editor. He is a journalist and the author of many books, including "Starting an Online Business For Dummies," "Go Google: 20 Ways to Reach More Customers and Build Revenue with Google Business Tools," and several books about eBay, including "How to Do Everything with Your eBay Business," second edition, and "Secrets of the eBay Millionaires," both published by Osborne-McGraw Hill. Find out more on Greg's website, which includes his blog, a list of his books, and his fiction and biographical writing.
