Auction house

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An auction house is a business establishment that facilitates the buying and selling of assets, such as works of art and collectibles. [1]

Contents

Overview

The auction house is the physical facility where the objects are catalogued, displayed, and presented to the perspective buyers through a bidding process system.

An auction house Crosby Garrett Helmet on auction at Christies.jpg
An auction house

The private individual or company managing the house, usually offer services such as clearances, collection of items, shipping, while also advising through valuations, and on fixing reserve amounts. [2]

Two auction houses emerged in eighteenth-century England that persisted leading the market. Initially specializing in the auctioning of books and literary goods, Sotheby's was founded in 1744, and in 1766 Christie's opened by auctioning paintings and decorative arts.

Auctioned goods may vary from fine wines to toys, from furniture to entire estates. As the range of goods sold at these auction houses expanded, they opened auctions over the phone first, and on the Internet after, making possible purchasing goods fully remotely. [3]

One of the most relevant roles within an auction house is the auctioneer, who has the task of conducting the actual auction. The auctioneer declares the rules of the auction, inform the sequence of items being sold, acknowledges bids made, and announces the winner by tapping a gavel.

See also

Related Research Articles

A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with said person or organization, or have been paid to do so. Shills can carry out their operations in the areas of media, journalism, marketing, politics, sports, confidence games, cryptocurrency, or other business areas. A shill may also act to discredit opponents or critics of the person or organization in which they have a vested interest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auction</span> Process of offering goods or services up for bids

An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition exist and are described in the section about different types. The branch of economic theory dealing with auction types and participants' behavior in auctions is called auction theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sotheby's</span> International auction house

Sotheby's is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and maintains a significant presence in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dutch auction</span> Type of auction which begins with a high asking price, and lowers it

A Dutch auction is one of several similar types of auctions for buying or selling goods. Most commonly, it means an auction in which the auctioneer begins with a high asking price in the case of selling, and lowers it until some participant accepts the price, or it reaches a predetermined reserve price. This type of price auction is most commonly used for goods that are required to be sold quickly such as flowers, fresh produce, or tobacco. A Dutch auction has also been called a clock auction or open-outcry descending-price auction. This type of auction shows the advantage of speed since a sale never requires more than one bid. It is strategically similar to a first-price sealed-bid auction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online auction</span> Auction held over the internet

An online auction is an auction held over the internet and accessed by internet connected devices. Similar to in-person auctions, online auctions come in a variety of types, with different bidding and selling rules.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vickrey auction</span> Auction priced by second-highest sealed bid

A Vickrey auction or sealed-bid second-price auction (SBSPA) is a type of sealed-bid auction. Bidders submit written bids without knowing the bid of the other people in the auction. The highest bidder wins but the price paid is the second-highest bid. This type of auction is strategically similar to an English auction and gives bidders an incentive to bid their true value. The auction was first described academically by Columbia University professor William Vickrey in 1961 though it had been used by stamp collectors since 1893. In 1797 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sold a manuscript using a sealed-bid, second-price auction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English auction</span> Type of dynamic auction

An English auction is an open-outcry ascending dynamic auction. It proceeds as follows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese auction</span>

A Japanese auction is a dynamic auction format. It proceeds in the following way.

A bidding fee auction, also called a penny auction, is a type of all-pay auction in which all participants must pay a non-refundable fee to place each small incremental bid. The auction is extended each time a new bid is placed, typically by 10 to 20 seconds. Once time expires without a new bid being placed, the last bidder wins the auction and pays the amount of that bid. The auctioneer profits from both the fees charged to place bids and the payment for the winning bid; these combined revenues frequently total more than the value of the item being sold. Empirical evidence suggests that revenues from these auctions exceeds theoretical predictions for rational agents. This has been credited to the sunk cost fallacy. Such auctions are typically held over the Internet, rather than in person.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auction sniping</span> Bidding at the last moment as an auction strategy

Auction sniping is the practice, in a timed online auction, of placing a bid likely to exceed the current highest bid as late as possible—usually seconds before the end of the auction—giving other bidders no time to outbid the sniper. This can be done either manually or by software on the bidder's computer, or by an online sniping service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auction theory</span> Branch of applied economics regarding the behavior of bidders in auctions

Auction theory is an branch of applied economics that deals with how bidders act in auctions and researches how the features of auctions incentivise predictable outcomes. Auction theory is a tool used to inform the design of real-world auctions. Sellers use auction theory to raise higher revenues while allowing buyers to procure at a lower cost. The confluence of the price between the buyer and seller is an economic equilibrium. Auction theorists design rules for auctions to address issues that can lead to market failure. The design of these rulesets encourages optimal bidding strategies in a variety of informational settings. The 2020 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multiunit auction</span>

A multiunit auction is an auction in which several homogeneous items are sold. The units can be sold each at the same price or at different prices.

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (RBA), or simply Ritchie Bros., is a publicly traded Canadian-domiciled company with headquarters in Westchester, Illinois. Its common shares are traded on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bidding</span> Method of competitive price determination used in auctions, stock exchanges, etc.

Bidding is an offer to set a price tag by an individual or business for a product or service or a demand that something be done. Bidding is used to determine the cost or value of something.

Auction chant is a rhythmic repetition of numbers and "filler words" spoken by auctioneers when taking bids at an auction. Auction chanting is a method of conducting live auctions frequently found in North America where it is practiced in English, Spanish, French and other languages. It is much less common outside North America, and the most notable exceptions within North America are auction houses with significant ties elsewhere in the world such as art brokerages. The chant consists of at least the current price, the asking price to outbid and words to keep the audience engaged. Auctioneers typically develop their own style, and competitions are held to judge them. Outside of auctions, the chant has been the subject of music and used in commercials and film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mock auction</span>

A mock auction is a scam usually operated in a street market, disposal sale or similar environment, where cheap and low quality goods are sold at high prices by a team of confidence tricksters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reverse auction</span> Auction with one buyer and many potential sellers

A reverse auction is a type of auction in which the traditional roles of buyer and seller are reversed. Thus, there is one buyer and many potential sellers. In an ordinary auction also known as a forward auction, buyers compete to obtain goods or services by offering increasingly higher prices. In contrast, in a reverse auction, the sellers compete to obtain business from the buyer and prices will typically decrease as the sellers underbid each other.

PropertyRoom.com is a live online auction website that sells confiscated police goods and approved third party merchant merchandise to the highest winning bidder. PropertyRoom.com is the largest online police auction website in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Police auction</span>

A police auction is an auction of goods which have been confiscated by the police and cannot or may not be returned to their original owners. They may also contain surplus and retired police equipment, such as used police cars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Government auction</span> Auction held for state-owned or state-sold property

A government auction or a public auction is an auction held on behalf of a government in which the property to be auctioned is either property owned by the government or property which is sold under the authority of a court of law or a government agency with similar authority.

References

  1. Doyle, Robert A.; Baska, Steve (November 2002), "History of Auctions: From ancient Rome to today's high-tech auctions", Auctioneer, archived from the original on 2008-05-17, retrieved 2008-06-22
  2. "Glossary of Auction Terms". GAUK Auctions. 23 May 2018.
  3. Sabra Easterday:E-bidding: The New Global Business Trend Archived 15 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Accessed: 11 June 2013.