Auctions must adapt
NCHARTED TERRITORY. A film set. Armageddon. All expressions we have heard over the past months. But now, with a new world beckoning, we ask: how will the business world come through this financially — and which businesses have not only survived but thrived? “Adapt or die” is an old adage. True of so many businesses, but never more so than now. Thankfully, change has been evident in the world of auctions for many years. Gone are the preinternet days, when auctions were seen as a preserve of the trade. With the advent of the internet, the auction world has become more transparent and regulated. More private buyers than ever before now buy at auction with increased knowledge and confidence, aware that auction prices are far better value than buying retail.
In recent pre-Covid-19 days, the numbers of people physically attending auctions had been rapidly reducing. With the options of leaving pre-sale commission bids, telephone bids and bidding live online, buyers no longer need to literally sit through the sale. I have attended auctions where, apart from the staff doing telephone bidding and the auctioneer and auctioneer’s clerk on the rostrum, there has been no one else in the room.
If the coronavirus has taught the auction world anything, it will push those auctioneers lagging behind into improving their online bidding capacity. Larger auction houses (and indeed those smaller houses that are technologically advanced) have their own bidding platforms, accessible directly through their own websites and offered free of charge for bidders.
Some auction houses who have not yet invested in this in-house technology are at the mercy of external bidding platforms that charge bidders an additional percentage fee. Auctioneers are rapidly adapting to wholly online sales, either conducted purely online with a timed finish or with the auction still taking in place in real time and the auctioneer controlling the sale.
Some auction houses have been pro-active by not only continuing their planned auction calendars, but increasing the number of sales during lockdown — firstly, to capitalise on the fact buyers have increased time on their hands and increased spending power without commuting, socialising and family holidays etc; secondly, gold prices have been reaching record highs, so increasing the bullion value of precious objects and thirdly, there is an inevitable shortage of supply — all valid economic justifications. Supported by good in-house technology, there was no reason to suppose this strategy would not work and indeed, current prices seen at recent live online auctions are proving these projections were right — prices have been some 15 per cent higher at auction than preCovid days. Time will tell who the winners and losers of the auction world prove to be… but, as in all walks of life, “who dares wins”…
Frances Noble is head of the jewellery department and associate director at Dix Noonan Webb Auctioneers, dnw.co.uk