I had an interesting telephone conversation about this auction. with
Steve Raiche (who only collects good plates). I chuckled with
Steve, commenting how little some plates sold for, telling him "who needs
a whole box of rusty Pennsylvania plates?", he replied "no one", cutting
me off in mid-sentence.
He told me that in this day and age of the Internet, the auctioneers
should have found someone knowledgeable to best sell this auction.
There is no excuse these days to try to handle something you know little
about, so if they were not satisfied with the results, it was their fault.
And I can't imagine they were very satisfied with what happened.
It was obvious that many man weeks were spent needlessly preparing this
sale, and they probably found themselves working for less than minimum
wage in the end.
Okay Mr. Genius, how would you have handled the auction?
Actually it doesn't take a genius to figure out what to do. All it takes is the ability to distinguish a good plate from a junky one, and some very basic math, actually. Let me explain.
The problem is, we have 25,000+ plates sitting in some barn in the town of Delmar. Using my postal scale, two steel plates weigh roughly a pound, so we are talking about 12,500 pounds of material. Brittingham the auctioneer was correct in his assessment that this collection weighed tons. This is a huge number, especially given that the auctioneers had to move the material at least twice . Once to their own local storage in order to sort and catalog it, and then again to the convention center. This moving in itself represents a lot of labor. They even went as far as cataloging every single plate compiling the results into 3 large binders. Let's hold the phone here for a second. How many people actually took the time to look through and read these books when everything was on the floor to be seen anyway? That's right, no one. The tomes cataloguing a lot of junk sat motionless at the auctioneer's booth pretty much the whole time.
Now let's get back to where the collection originally was - in a barn
on Ford Brewington's property. What I would have done, is separated
the junk from the good plates right on site. And judging from the
auction, that easily represented about 1/2 the material. 6,250 or roughly
3 tons worth. Now the problem is, we need a truck tough enough for
the job. I have just the truck pictured right here. It can handle
the gross weight quite nicely.
 |
 |
| I got this truck cheap
off eBay. For less than $500!
A good fix er - upper :-) Even has the Oregon State seal on the door. New Paint Job by Dave Nicholson of 15q.net |
Okay, I've got the truck backed up - let's start loading... |
Don't laugh (or utter cries of disgust). I would back it up to the pile of junky plates (two piles - steel and aluminum) and start loading. Loading is easy - I let the truck's compactor do most of the work. It effectively bales up the junk and compacts the load. There, that problem is taken care of. Finished. Done. Now I go wipe the dirt off my hands. I then drive off to the nearest recycling facility, or why not Weirton Steel? Then at least I'll get paid for the scrap and Weirton isn't that far from my home in Fairmont, WV. We also have Alcan right here in town to handle any aluminum if Weirton can't.
I
can see some of the plate guys cry foul at this point. My response?
Let's get real, folks! This is a business we are running
here, nothing more, nothing less. Junky plates just get in the way
of the good stuff - think about that one for a second. How much do
you think people are going to bid when they see one or two good plates
in a box of junk? How many collectors are actulaly going to see
those two good plates in the box of junk? Well, then why don't
you put the junk in large piles and have people bid on that separately
to make money? You may ask. My response is: It's not
cost effective. Remember, the labor involved in transporting the junk
to the convention hall and putting in boxes will outweigh your proceeds.
Or at least you're going to have to pay your auction assistants to do it.
Collectors aren't going to bid much on junk anyway! You are better
off getting rid of it to begin with, and then the problem is gone (or at
least it becomes Weirton Steel's problem at the blast furnace, muahahahaha!)
I think Len Harris said it best: Hello, it's junk, throw it away! (to a man who was trying to sell junky Illinois plates over and over again on eBay).
Now with the junk out of the way, we can concentrate on the better stuff. I would put the average plates in lots, and nice plates individually or in smaller groups of a few plates. That way, nothing gets lost in the shuffle (trust me, plenty of good plates were indeed lost in the shuffle because they got stuck in a box of junk). An auction inventory is now maybe a few pages, as opposed to 3 large volumes!
Bringing all the junk for people to bid on presents other problems as well. The extra volume required 2 separate auction rings going simulaneously. This could have been eliminated, if the volume was reduced and the plates organized into good lots as opposed to "boxes of stuff". When you have one ring, you have more interest naturally because all eyes will be on it at once. If you have everybody in one ring due to a high interest lot (such as the Delaware plates) you almost end up giving away whatever is being sold in the other ring. This does not happen when you have everybody bidding at once. Another problem with the "boxes of stuff" approach is that you are relying on people's memory of what exactly was in there, and then hoping they will bid accordingly. Well, you know during the frenzy of an auction, people aren't going to remember - you had your eyes set on a good plate and could not remember for your life what box it was in! An auction happens so fast, you do not have time to think. And do you think buyers are going to remember what was listed in those 3 big binders that no one looked at in the first place? There is only so much "choice out of box" you can sell, before the entire box has to go. So if you end up auctioning off a box with a couple good plates nestled within, no one is going to notice and bid accordingly - with rare exceptions. If you isolated the few good plates for everybody to see, the net result will be more money. Parts of the collection were indeed sold that way (for example, the Delaware plates) and the results were far better. Now do you see what the junk is worth? That's right, from a business point of view tossing it into the truck is the only solution.
I may come across as "demeaning and wreckless" to some in making some pretty bold statements here. Tough. I have been around plates long enough to know what collectors do or don't want in this hobby, and when you save time by throwing out the stuff that almost no one wants, everbody wins, including the steel companies. If you want to start someone off collecting, do it with common plates in nice condition, NOT junk (common plates in rough condition). That's what Scott Mitchell once told me. I'm not the only one who thinks in these terms. According to a recent licenseplates.cc survey, 125 out of 203 collectors don't have time for junk and don't hesitate to throw it out.
If the auctioneers are reading this, they probably think I am "Mr. know
it all" by now. That's fine. We all make mistakes. The
big part is learning from them instead of being stubborn and thinking you
know
best. Teamwork is everything and unfortunately the auctioneers didn't
team up with knowledgable plate collectors. I have to admit during
the course of my regular work I make mistakes all the time. So, I
cannot entirely fault what the auctioneers did in the end - after all most
people did have a good time and that's half the point of a good
auction anyway - high spirits. But the next time they want to handle
the disposal of a huge license plate collection, they will know how to
approach it, and who to call. And I'll have my truck waiting.
Page created Apr 9, 2003