Auctions: Its a New World Out There

Into this complex and changing environment the AE is providing a de facto structure by which the auction houses’ sales materials become available to collectors as if they were a functioning unit. We stay clear of the competition among auction houses simply by reporting upcoming sales, categorizing upcoming lots, providing copies of the lot descriptions and after the sales, reporting the outcomes. We do not participate in any way in the sales. Bidders make arrangements with the houses themselves. In this way we can report what is happening and not in any way infringe on the competitive struggle. Think of us as the Red Cross volunteers on a Civil War battlefield.

This allows us to construct a comprehensive picture of book auctions worldwide and to provide it to our members as a logical companion service to our database that, among other things, enables interested parties to evaluate Americana in complex ways that were previously generally impossible and when possible almost always impossibly slow.

It is an exceptional service. It works very well. It will absolutely change the world of book auctions for the better and should, with time, bring some portion of the sales that book auctions have seen move to the net, back into the auction rooms. It should also bring new customers in, not just old customers back because, using our categorical approach to auctions, where the category is fixed and the auctions are the variable, interested parties can simply move through their categories of interest in search of lots, wherever they may be, that are of interest. Simply stated, a much larger audience will know about the auctions and will be aware when material of interest to them comes to the floor.

Now if the toughest part of buying at auction is finding appropriate lots, another demanding issue is working through the various differences between how individual auction houses work and how they describe their lots. Auction houses run the gamut from the bibliographically complex to the bibliographically minimalist. Some houses tell you everything and some houses tell you almost nothing. Some descriptions assume you have no reference books and they therefore include all important material in their descriptions. Others clearly expect to sell their books to the trade and rely on a kind of shorthand to get the books up and out. Experienced book people read the minimalist descriptions with a knowing eye while an inexperienced onlooker might not understand the lot at all. The AE database goes a long way toward providing transparency for bidders. But of course, bidders need to understand the lot thoroughly.

Bibliographical description aside, it must be assumed that condition is clearly stated and is understood by all parties to be what the words of the description say. This is not always the case and is often the reason that an auction buyer decides not to buy at auction anymore. It can happen, even at the best houses, that an “almost good copy” is over-described and sold to a collector who failed to understand the subtext of the description that might have begun, “But for.....” It is a continuing issue for auction houses that their descriptions can be misinterpreted. There is such a thin line between great salesmanship and over-description that auction buyers must carefully learn the terms and standards of each house, at least until such time as the auction field adopts a set of common descriptive terms to lessen the potential for buyer misunderstanding. Many book dealers, if called upon, will provide expert advice on material at auction. And various dealer organizations provide lists on-line of specialist dealers. Many very experienced collectors rely upon a dealer for such advice.

For the time being we have a new process and as I have described it, it is not foolproof. On the AE we can follow auctions worldwide. We can evaluate each auction and identify material of interest to collectors of European-Americana and Americana. We can provide an extensive database to empower interested parties to quickly identify and evaluate material. We can make it easy to identify and contact auctions who are offering interesting material but we can not vouch for the accuracy of the descriptions nor confirm that the physical qualities described are accurate. For that the auction houses must take responsibility.

Hence what we are providing now, on the AE, an extensive overview of the auctions with categorization of lots, is an enormous step forward but it will not get either the auction houses or the buyers all the way home. For that to happen there needs to be a shared perception by both the buyer and the auction house of precisely what a lot is. Until that time, the thousands of interested parties that will follow the auctions via the AE will certainly move toward the auctions but will tread carefully given the need for standardized descriptive language, that when it comes, will explode upon the book auction world like a comet passing by the earth.