Oriental Art & Antiques

Antique Auctions Online Poised for Rapid Growth

Antique auctions online are set to grow exponentially over the next few years and if you let yourself be left out of the loop, insisting that only a traditional auction will do for your buying needs, you’re going to be missing out on some great antiques. If you’ve never heard of such an auction, allow us to be the first to explain to you exactly how it works.

Different Types of Online Auctions

There are several flavors of auctions both on and offline. The most traditional kind of auction of course is the kind we always picture when we hear the term auction. That’s where a group of objects are gathered in a particular room somewhere, they are all tagged with numbers, and sometimes they will have estimated values. Often, you have to pay a fee just to walk in the door of such an auction. Once the auction starts, the auctioneer will stand up front and call out prices from the crowd based on who waves their paddle.

There are also Chinese auctions where you purchase the right to bid on a certain value of product, say $5 items, $10 items, etc. Then you walk around with your tickets and stick them into boxes for that “auction.” At the end of the evening, a random drawing from the tickets dropped in the box will decide who wins the auction. These are often used by charitable organizations in order to raise money.

Finally, there are silent auctions where you are free to write down a price you are willing to pay and other people will write down their prices on the same piece of paper and after a specified time, the auction ends and whoever bid the most wins the auction.

All three of these types of auctions exist online, however, the antiques auction online that we see poised for the most growth is the traditional type, using an auctioneer. Here’s Why:

Other Types of Auctions Aren’t Right for Antiques

With the advent of the Internet, for the first time people were able to come together and do things with friends and family all over the world. The Internet also meant that people all over the world could easily do business with each other. There was no more need to mail a catalog, wait for it to arrive, wait for your bid to come back, and then hope you could win the auction. Today, it’s all instant. However, this has also brought a scourge for the antiques auction online business. There are so many fakes floating around that silent auctions such as eBay are being discredited. The variation of Chinese auctions online, where you pay each time for the right to bid and the time of the auction is extended for 15 minutes, has the same inherent sense of chance as a traditional Chinese auction and thus is not suitable for serious antiques collectors.

Live Bid Auctions to the Rescue

The only kind of antique auctions online that can be safely employed by the serious antiques collector is the live auction. These types of auctions allow for maximum flexibility with buyers being able to live anywhere, and maximum security because these kinds of auctions are run only by licensed auctioneers who must follow state licensing rules. So get out there and find an online antique auction today. You’ll thank us later.

About the Author

To view and bid live in upcoming live auctions, visit http://www.icollector.com. William J. Walberg is a freelance writer who writes articles in the auction and technology industries.

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