How On Line Auctions Work

This website provides an on line auction service. An on line auction is conducted using the internet. Each auction has a start and end date and a duration of typically a week, a few weeks or a month. At the end of the auction the bidder who offers the highest price for any lot is the successful purchaser.

On Line Auctions Compared to Live Auctions

On line auctions are completely transparent. On line auctions cannot have ’rings’ where a group of bidders at a live auction conspire to keep bidding lower than it would otherwise be. On line auctions need no telephone bidding and no internet live bidding. On line auctions need no commission bidding where your maximum bid is submitted in advance to the auctioneer - open to abuse by unscrupulous firms.

On this on line auction platform you can ask the system to bid for you up to your specified maximum - the auctioneers are not aware of your maximum bids which are unknown to anyone but you.

OnLine Auctions - Consumer to Consumer (C2C)

eBay is the best known on line auction service. eBay mostly sells items consigned by individual vendors and sells then to individual buyers. It works very well and is mightily successful but the buyer cannot be sure of the provenance of the goods and must place their faith in the vendor. Buyers are encouraged to provide feedback on the trustworthiness of individual vendors but this can lead to malicious and defamatory remarks being recorded about individuals on a public platform.

eBay has any number of defamation (libel) disputes ongoing via the European Court.

Most eBay transactions are for second-hand goods. It is impossible for the buyer to know their condition or legal status or whether delivery will actually occur once the buyer has paid.

Business to Consumer - Business to Consumer (B2C)

This website is business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B). The goods are being sold by established businesses (the auctioneers) to individual purchasers. This is very different from the consumer-to-consumer model of eBay and the like. The goods are mostly available for viewing at the auction premises or an agreed location. Bidders can attend and judge the value and condition for themselves. The goods can be legally sold. The buyer can be certain that, once paid for, their purchases can be collected or delivered to them.

Visual Impact

The designers hope you like this site. They have tried hard to produce a website that is good to look at, full of features, all combined with an elegant user interface. Few of the pages on this site pre-exist. Most site content is generated dynamically (on-demand) from information stored in the site’s database. So pages can be generated with exactly the information you requested.

Browser Technology

The website can be used on all modern browsers including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. It looks and operates identically on each. Our favourite and that of all IT professionals is Firefox. It can also be used on modern browser-enabled smart phones - iPhone for example.

The website has been tested at all screen (monitor) resolutions in both normal and large fonts. We think it looks best at 1440 x 900 in normal fonts. It can also be viewed at lower or higher resolutions and in wide-screen mode. If you have a large screen it might help to switch your Windows Desktop to viewing with large fonts where the text will appear larger and clearer. The Help section will tell you how.

Security

The designers have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that this website offers a reliable and secure on line bidding platform. All personal data is encrypted using the latest SSL technology. The website administrators work under stringent access conditions. Electronic payment card details are not retained. All personal data stored on this website is treated as private and will not be passed on to any third party.

End Dates and Times

On this website, items are grouped together to form individual auction sales. Each sale starts and ends at a defined time. Each item in each sale is identified by its own unique lot number. So each lot in a sale has an end date and time nominally the same as all other lots in the sale.

As each sale enters its final 10 minutes, the end time of each individual lot has its end time extended if there are users still bidding for it. This procedure allows lots with no further bids to be ’ended’ while other lots continue being bid on. Only when all bidding has ceased on all lots is the entire sale ’completed’. This procedure mimics the sale process in a conventional live auction and guarantees that the best bid will always be successful rather than the fastest bid.

Value Added Tax (VAT)

In order to sell second hand goods within the EU without the imposition of VAT (Sales Tax) on the selling price, the auctioneers are obliged by UK/EU law to use the Auctioneers’ Margin Scheme.

Commercial goods will attract VAT on the selling price at various rates. VAT will also be collected on service charges and auctioneer’s commission.

An explanation of VAT can be found by clicking on any image.

Pictures and Works of Art

This is the only on line auction platform we know of worldwide that correctly interprets UK/EU law relating to the sale of works of art originated by living or deceased artists (Artist’s Resale Scheme). Click on any image for further details.

Pay and Collect

It is a rare on line auction that lets you pay for and collect the goods. This on line platform has a full point-of-sale retail checkout facility where you can attend, pay and take away. You can of course contact the auctioneer, pay by electronic means and have the items delivered.

Value

Many of the items for sale will be new or new but end of production, manufacturer returns or bankruptcy disposals. Many will be sold without reserve. The status of each lot will be fully annotated by each auctioneer. Most will be available at a fraction of normal retail value and will represent excellent value for money.