Leadholder auctions are sealed bid auctions with a new wrinkle. Typical sealed bid auctions work thusly: 1 Bidders submit bids. 2 The bids are kept secret until the auction is over. 3 Whomever submitted the highest bid wins. 4 The winner pays the full amount of their winning bid.
In Leadholder auctions steps 1 through 3 are followed, but step 4 is replaced with this: 4 The winner pays only the amount of the second highest bid!
* An auction savvy reader wrote to inform me that my crazy auction system is actually called a Vickrey auction
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But that is not the only reason for doing it this way. See, here’s the way I think about this. On eBay auctions the winner pays only an amount a few cents more than the second highest bid—just enough to best the losing bid. I like that about eBay. Often you can win an auction you would have paid a ransom to win for just a few bucks. If I do a standard blind auction and make all the winners pay their maximum in the short run that would be good for me. But in the long run all my customers would exhaust their pencil budgets very quickly and stop bidding at all. I would rather get fair prices for all my pencils rather than great prices for a few and end up giving the rest away for nothing.
You see, there aren’t very many of us people who think pencils are exciting. I need to take care of the visitors to Leadholder, not try to gouge them out of the market.
And besides, I already said I was. What more do you want from me?
But I am a moron after all, so where’s the sport in that?
There is no point in doing it that way since no one will see your bid until after the auction is over. And, by the way, when the bids are posted they will be listed only by a cryptic login number.
This duration may change depending on how things go. I will try to update the auction pages as soon as possible after the end of an auction. I have to do this by hand though, so if I have to leave town for work, which happens occasionally, I may not get it updated for a day or two. Even if I cannot get the site updated immediately I will make every effort to contact the winner via email.
If I do not hear back from the winner after a week or so, I will assume he or she is no longer interested in the item and will offer it to the next highest bidder.
I’ll let you in on a secret since you’ve been patient enough to read this far: You can write anything you want in the “bid” field of an auction. You could write “I bid on this already but changed my mind,” or something and submit that.
Hell, now that I think about it why not put something like “a mint in the box Eberhard Faber 606” in there and we’ll see what happens.
I’ll email the winner with the final auction price and shipping cost based on the address you provided when you registered. You can pay with a credit card or bank transfer via PayPal by sending payment to leadholder.dennis@gmail.com or you can send a check or money order if you are in the U.S. to me at the address on the Contact Page. If neither of these options work for you, I’m sure we can work something out. Please try to pay within a reasonable amount of time, like a week or so. You should contact me as soon as you can after receiving a win notice so I know you want the item.
Shipping charges will be minimal. For a pencil or two that are not especially fragile, they can be sent in a padded envelope for $2 to anywhere in the U.S. To Canada it’s a bit more. To other countries I will use a flat rate international mailer that last time I checked was $11.00. The international mailer, can be filled with a few pounds of stuff so even if you win several auctions the cost will remain the same if you request that I wait and send items together.
For fragile items or boxed items, I will ship them via USPS Priority mail which uses a sturdy box and costs $5.00 within the U.S.
Any payment or shipping options not covered above can be dealt with as they occur. I will never screw you with shipping, unless you consider being slow screwing, in which case you’re screwed.
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Please be aware however, I am often slow to respond. I will try to do my best since the auctions have an element of time dependence.
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| © 2001 to 2008 Dennis B. Smith |
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