It seems the growing pains have knocked all the fun out of it for me.
As of today, I have sold 4 items, everything that was auctioned. But now, only a handful of items have a guaranteed spot on the auctions available to them. The rest go into "Standby".
Which means that someone has to "advance" it to the ability for your item to be auctioned by bidding on it in the half hour before the auction starts or sometime during the first few items or even faster if there are a lot of items. So before the auctioneer talks about it, before all eyes are on it, before me, as the seller, can be upfront talking my item up, it has to get a prebid in this short time frame.
The fun about auctions...real life and online...is that I often bid on something I have no intention of bidding on when I preview. Something the auctioneer says, getting caught up in the bidding, drives many lookers to become bidders. Not this new system.
And, you can't prebid on it the day before. So if you are someone who finds something you like, you have to set an alarm to actually bid on it in that narrow timeframe to move it to auction, then stick around until it finallly makes it to the auction block. I know I, for one, don't often have that kind of block of time to devote to one purchase. It would be nice to bid on it in advance, at your convenience, then get an alarm when it's ready to go on the block.
I kinda thought I'd auction off more art, but am having second thoughts.
It seems like Tophatter is confining itself. Maybe it doesn't have the servers...or buyers...for more auctions. I don't have time to waste with scheduling and rescheduling and rescheduling. Like I said, my success rate for auctions is 100%, and if I could actually get into an auction, I'd continue there. But praying and hoping for a bid in a very small pool of people who are able and willing to come and bid on an item a half out before so that it can be bid on in an hour....doesn't seem a good use of resources. My previous, glowing review is here: http://artandanimals.blogspot.com/2012/03/review-of-tophatter-auction-site-to.html
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