BASIC CHECKLIST FOR AN AUCTION SELLER GUIDE TO SUCCESS

The final moment when it's time to clean up around your home, Honestly some people are having a hard time deciding what to keep and what to throw out. What they need is an incentive. You heard it correct instead of throwing why making it a passive income.

How about getting money from not usable kinds of stuff and room spacers that were collecting dust?

You can do this by auctioning off your unwanted or no longer needed items on professional auctioneers, online platforms like eBay, and many more. 

While eBay considers was the largest online marketplace of its kind. And professional auctioneers that have a good reputation who could take care of your belongings with the amount of network and market they have. 

Looking for an professional auctioneers contact us we provide free consultation click here

If you are decided to consider doing this selling option, then you need to know the basic knowledge of the listing process.

These are the 10 basic checklists to go over before you begin selling:

1. Look at Other Seller Listings

Do a search for your item. Observe carefully how other online sellers list the same or similar items you have in mind. Take every note precisely of the category, the title, the description, the photo, and the pricing.

2. Picking the Most Appropriate Category

Make sure your stuff is in the most relevant and exact category. Avoid placing it in an irrelevant category where it doesn't belong. Listing your item in the wrong category can make people looking for your item hardly to find it. Let professional auctioneer or online auction sites suggest the category for you if you are unsure which every stuff category your item belongs to.

3. Write an Accurate Title or Perfect Headline for Your Listing

Make it easy for your online buyers and collectors to find your item in a search by writing a precise title of it. Google help online searcher getting items online being precise could be helpful. Be as perfectly precise and specific as possible so your item can show up in huge keyword searches online too. Avoid using propaganda terms like "The Best," "One of a kind," or "Phenomenal." Putting these terms in the title will not help buyers and collectors find your stuff online because they don't try typing those words in their searches. They are preferring exact detail as much as possible.

4. Set Your Price Low and reasonable

Attract your buyers and collectors by starting at a low price. Setting it up on a serving price in your listings, so you do not have to sell it when the event or an auction ends at a too low price for you to make a profit.

5. Give an enormous amount of Time to Your Auction

Let as many people as possible notice your online auction. Set a good duration like four, five, or seven days so weekend buyers will have a chance to bid on your item too. People usually busy and on their works not having time to check auctions.

6. Show a High-resolution shot of Your Item

Take a high-resolution shot of your item and post it with your listing. Let your buyers and collectors see what they are bidding on. Allow the picture to help you sell it. Showing the full image of stuff on something you buy is natural before buying it. These principles to online auctions are the same. Buying a modern camera or a high-quality phone to shot a high-resolution shot is a good investment these days. Instructions on uploading pictures up to the online auction site are simple enough that there really is no excuse not to have a picture.

7. Give Buyers and Collectors handful of Payment Options

Make it easy for the buyer and collector to pay for the items you are selling. Providing as many payment options as available is more helpful. Placing in your pieces of stuff listing your own merchant account or credit card processor information. 

Sign up at online payment platforms like Paypal if you don't have your own merchant account. Let buyers and collectors pay by check or money order if you don't provide payment through Paypal or credit/debit cards. Including all payment type of options leaves no buyers and collectors behind.

8. Be Clear on Shipping and Declaring Information

Avoid problems or negative seller feedback by stating upfront your shipping costs these will help buyers and collectors calculate the payment they will make. Mention all of this clearly in your listing. Include your return policy.

9. Give Exact Contact Information

Succeeding in getting the buyer's trust by openly stating your contact information. It is necessary to give them a reason that you are showing your reliability in selling items. List your working email, phone number, or mailing address.

10. Keep on doing some Testing

Review the auctions that have ended. Learn from the wins and losses you have experience on auctioning. Try changing the category, title, description, or price if it didn't sell to buyers and collectors. Testing 

the specific elements in the auction process are critical to your intent of becoming a successful auction seller.

IMPORTANT TIPS ON HOW TO USE CLASSIFIED ADS ON EBAY

Due to recent business policy changes, new feedback rules, and an increase in auction fees across the board. More online sellers saying it is becoming harder to make money on eBay.

Can you still make money with eBay? Yes, it is! And I'm going to talk about one of the most underused features on eBay - the classified ad.

While the classified ad format has been around for a while on eBay, it has only recently begun to attract attention due to the number of people starting to use it to its full potential and making money from it.
eBay admits that classified ads are great for lead generation, so you might have to take advantage of them.

For the small fee of $9.95 for an ad that runs for 30 days on one of the most visited sites online. While at first look that might seem a high price, it roughly works out to less than 0.35 cents per day.

Check out our Ebay Listings below just click the image

While eBay currently is the fourth most visited site on the internet while billions of buyers and online sellers visiting every month.

Even if you could only get a handful of that site traffic you could potentially make a lot of money.

Taking that sort of website traffic means that you're going to have to grab the attention of the most potential buyer, and what better way to do that is by using a sales page as your advertisement.

A great title is the first thing you will need to encourage people to click on your ad, backed up by a strong description to entice people to take action.

Maybe that action is to buy your product, contact you for more information, or promote your business website. The freedom of what you can do with a classified advertisement on eBay means that it is all possible and less hustle.

Advertisements on eBay are very similar to regular auction listings with a few differences.

• First is you are not selling a physical item as you would in a regular auction. You do not have a bid now or buy now button on your listing.

• Secondly, you cannot give or receive positive or negative testimonials (which some might say is a good thing now!)

• Third, because the transaction process happens outside of eBay platform, there is no final value listing fee for it.

There is still some confusion about what you can and cannot include in your ad, but if you're hesitating on eBay their company has its a full policy on its website.

HIGHLIGHTING MERCHANDISE

While the New Year is fast approaching we wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the items we came across while working with our clients during 2020.

Listed Russian Artist Alexander
Alexandrovich Kiselev ( 1838−1911)  Large Oil on Canvas

Oil on canvas signed in  Cyrillic and dated 1894. The painting has been with the family for many years. The sight measures 34.5" X 8". The customer already has an appraised value of 20,000-40,000 euros from one of the most respectable auctions houses specialized in Russian art, based on the pictures submitted.
He is willing to lower the price and give the buyer 30 days from the date the painting is received  for additional authentication. Measures  34.5" X 18".

(Left) Chippendale Style Three Seater

This mahogany Chippendale style settee, is in very good conditions, with red velvet and with few scratches commensurate with its age. Measures 39.5" in height, has a width of 62" from arm to arm and a seat measuring 57”X 15:.

(Right) Rosewood and mother of pearl with silk upholstery couch

5 REASONS TO OPT FOR THE PROFESSIONAL HELP OF AN ESTATE LIQUIDATION COMPANY

Selling your items is never easy, regardless why you are currently in this situation. The reasons are usually not the happiest ones, which means you might be dealing with a divorce or you need to pay off debt. Either way, you have to sell your belongings as fast as possible so that you can take care of the issue at hand. Especially when you are under a lot of stress, it is never a good idea to try and handle this sort of sale on your own as it can too complicated, really fast. Relying on an estate liquidation company, on the other hand, would be a more suitable solution. It’s why they are offering their services in the first place – to deal with these sales for you.

Here are the reasons why you should count on their help:

1. They are experts at estate liquidation, which means that they have gained experience and have developed their skills specifically for this purpose – to be able to appraise the items you have to sell and to efficiently take this entire process from stage one to the final one. It’s great because you don’t have to worry about anything, regardless if we are talking about the small details or the big parts of this whole deal. Everything you need to know will be discussed and agreed on when you meet. You can tell them how you prefer to solve the entire situation: sell everything to them or opt for estate auctions.

2. Their reputation was built with the purpose of offering their clients true value. This is exactly what happens when you rely on such a company to appraise, buy or auction your items. They will appraise everything you want to give away and might even surprise you by telling you some of these items are even higher in value than you initially thought. At the same time, people already know that this company exists as well as that they are expert liquidators. Individuals looking for antiques or other valuable items will be checking their website regularly for new items they might be selling, which will make it easier for them to sell yours faster.

3. The right team will make the ideal recommendation regarding the services you might require. When you don’t really know how you are going to go about selling all of your belongings, you might not know whether liquidation or estate auctions would be more suitable for you. Fortunately, when you contact such a company, they will meet with you, talk about your situation as well as your needs and tell you which of their services would be a better fit. Also, if you need to invest in estate auctions, they will take care of the entire process for you by taking photos and listing the items on their websites in the shortest time possible.

4. When you count on specialists that focus on estate liquidation for a living, you can be certain that they will offer a cleanout service as well. Even though you might have not opted for such an approach in the past, you should know that it is much easier and less challenging to prepare a property for sale than to hire specialists in estate liquidation that can appraise your items and even have a team clean the entire residence. Of course, this kind of service will require you to pay an additional fee, but it would certainly be all worth it. The result will be the one promised to you – a clean home, no more belongings in it and a nice sum of money transferred to your account.

5. It’s just easier to rely on experts because you know the outcome will be a positive one. When you are the one doing everything from trying to think about how much a specific item would cost to listing all of them on different websites to talking to prospective buyers, the situation can become frustrating. The biggest problem in this case is not the fact that the process is too complicated, but that it drags on for too long. You might only be able to sell some of the items and feel a lot more pressure than before. It is so much easier to simply leave this whole situation in the hands of specialists. They will finalize everything sooner than you might imagine.

It is important to understand that estate sales, especially when we are talking about liquidation, can be a bit too much to handle on your own. There is a specific reason why there are professionals who can do all this for you. Rely on their expertise, skills and knowledge for a more relaxed perspective. They know just how to guide you towards achieving the desired results. In some cases, auctions might be more suitable for you. In others, it would be easier to let them appraise every single, tell you how much they believe it is all worth and have them buy everything. It all depends on how soon you would like to have everything removed from the property and the property to be sold. You can allow these experts to get as involved as you need them to.

If you are simply interested in estate auctions and would like for them to start advertising your valuables sooner rather than later, mention it the moment you meet. They will tell you the pros and cons of every single one of the approaches you could opt for and will make sure that you take an informed decision. In this day and age, the online world makes it possible for you to take advantage of a level of exposure meant to help you get more interested buyers and higher bids. In the end, all that matters for a team like ours is to ensure that you are completely satisfied with the level of service that we provide. This is why having that initial conversation is essential for an amazing collaboration. We will be by your side from the beginning up until this whole transaction is finalized.

HOW TO VIEW ART AS AN ASSET WITH EVAN BEARD

This article is provided by Invaluable

In today’s market, collectors often ask themselves: should they buy fine art with the expectation that, in years to come, that price will perhaps double or even triple?We set out to answer that question with the help of Evan Beard, the National Art Services Executive with U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. Headquartered in New York City, Beard and his team work closely with art collectors to help them in lending against their collection, designing philanthropic or estate planning strategies, negotiation at auction, and structuring and managing private foundations. As an authority on art-related investing and financing, Beard directs the end-to-end provision of services to clients in the art world. We asked Beard how collectors should think about art, how he views the opinions of other thought leaders on the topic, and where the next wave of growth in the art market is likely to stem from.

Let’s say a client of yours sees fine art as an investment asset. Where does it fit into a client’s portfolio given its low to non-correlation with traditional investment assets? Is the return expectation similar for fine art as it is for other alternative assets in a client’s portfolio?

Evan Beard: The client’s objective is key here. The empirical literature on the financial returns of art is extensive and tends to reveal that art delivers a less-than compelling risk-adjusted financial return, even after adjusting for diversification benefits. So if your objective is purely financial, then art is not a great investment (never mind the transaction costs, holding costs, tax implications, and liquidity constraints).

Still, art’s total return goes far beyond the financial. Beyond a capital asset, art is an expressive and consumptive good. Owners derive important intrinsic benefits like cultural status, social capital, and aesthetic pleasure from owning a great work of art. These intrinsic benefits often lead to unique secondary financial benefits. So our advice is to buy art because it’s your passion and lifestyle, but do it with one eye on the financial implications.

Is fine art considered an alternative asset at U.S. Trust – a category that would typically include private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and hard assets and infrastructure?

EB: U.S. Trust offers a range of alternative and specialty investment classes from hedge funds, timber, farmland, and even oil fields, but we do not treat art as an investment class. Our U.S. Trust Art Services Group works closely with serious art collectors via lending against their collection, designing philanthropic or estate planning strategies, negotiating at auction, and structuring and managing private foundations, but we do not advise that clients buy art purely for investment purposes. Our view is that art does not live up to the standards of an asset class. Art is philosophy, psychology, symbolism, politics, beauty, connoisseurship, language, status, a social structure, an addiction, a lifestyle…so much more than an asset class.

In a Stanford Graduate School of Business research paper, co-authors Arthur Korteweg, Roman Kräussl, and Patrick Verwijmeren write, “Investors are eager to buy: Many so-called passion investments have been gaining in popularity, and a handful of funds […] are making it easier for investors of all income levels to put their money into fine art. In short, investors are embracing art-as-an-asset-class as if it were a newly discovered van Gogh. But is it?”

EB: The art fund industry has gone through several pupations. The British Rail Pension Fund invested in art as a diversification play. A spate of funds in the ’90s tried the hedge fund model of flipping privately sourced works. And more recently, we’ve seen a private equity model of collateralized art lending funds or closely held club deals. Most fund models have struggled due to one inescapable academic fact: the expected total return of art is both financial and intangible.

Art funds cannot deliver intangible return and have thus only delivered financial returns that are simply too low on a risk adjusted basis. Every new art fund is still trying to replicate the most successful art fund in history which ironically was the first. In 1914 French financier, Andre Level and his Le Peau de L’ours investment club returned a stunning 400 percent to investors by purchasing early masterpieces by Picasso, Matisse, and Vlaminck from 1907 to 1914 during the perfect time and place that birthed its own epoch known as modernism. Good luck replicating that again.

Art is philosophy, psychology, symbolism, politics, beauty, connoisseurship, language, status, a social structure, an addiction, a lifestyle…and so much more than an asset class.-Evan Beard

Gallerist Robert Landau once said: “The impulse to collect art has always arisen from a complex amalgam of aesthetic pleasure and connoisseurship on the one hand, and status-building and investment on the other. As the market has boomed, the latter factors have become more prominent […] The decline in connoisseurship means few buyers understand what they are doing.”

Do you agree or disagree that few buyers today truly understand what they are doing in acquiring art as an investment vehicle?

EB: The status-building impulse to buy art is as old as the Medicis. The Renaissance patronage system was largely status-signaling. Merchants commissioned works of art to prove their piety to a church viewed their profession as usurious and sinful. The pure investment impulse to collect is indeed a modern phenomenon, but I’ve still never met a serious collector who buys art as a way to prove he or she can throw money at something that will never pay a dividend. Sure, there are trophy hunters building cultural capital…not unlike the early 20th century industrialists who bought European art to signal cultural refinement. I’ve yet to see a work of art that sold for tens of millions of dollars not accepted by a large swath of the academic and art critical community as historically important or influential.

I agree with Landau insofar that based on our own surveys at U.S. Trust, younger collectors certainly have rose-colored glasses on when it comes to investing in contemporary art. Many have unreasonably high expectations of future financial return. At U.S. Trust, we try and manage expectations and create opportunities for our art collecting clients. For instance, we help clients unlock capital from their collections to buy real estate, invest in their business, pay estate taxes, or even buy more art…all while keeping the art on their walls.

What about art lending programs, are they increasing? Or do they remain in the realm of the billionaire art collector exclusively? What is the benefit to clients of securing an art-backed revolver or term loan?

EB: The art lending industry has expanded rapidly over the last ten years. We estimate that the industry now stands at ~$15-17 billion in loans outstanding. They certainly are not solely in the realm of the billionaire collector. At U.S. Trust we manage the largest art lending book in the world. Our loans tend to be 1 to 3 year term loans that can easily roll year to year. We can do the $500 million loan for a hedge fund or private equity fund manager looking to unlock capital to invest in his or her fund. But we also do the $5 million art loan to a multi-generation family looking to pay estate taxes.

How do you help clients liquidate art in their portfolio? As an advisor, are you active in the secondary market? Can you help a client monetize his/her art assets if the need for liquidity suddenly arises?

EB: Our U.S. Trust Art Services Group maintains very strong relationships with the auction houses. We work closely with our clients on the sell-side. We help clients negotiate auction consignments, manage estate settlements, design de-accession plans, and conduct philanthropic gifting strategies.

Where is the next wave of growth in the art market likely to come from?

EB: The evolutionary direction of culture and taste is anyone’s guess. We do know that younger collectors are more commercially driven, philanthropic, socially engaged, willing to use their art as loan collateral, sell works of art as they collect, and view their art as a capital asset. This will require wealth management firms and private banks to raise their game in how they advise and engage their clients around tangible assets like art.

Do you have any words of advice for the new art collector looking to build a collection, but also invest for the future?

EB: Collect what you love. Don’t buy art purely as an investment. When your collection gets serious, work with a private bank that understands the complex dynamics of your passion.

About Evan Beard

Evan Beard is the National Art Services Executive with U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. Headquartered in New York City, Evan leads the bank’s outreach to private and institutional art collectors, investors and artists nationwide. He works with a team of specialists who provide a suite of tailored offerings to a select group of families, auction houses, museums, endowments and foundations. An authority on art-related investing and financing, Evan directs the end-to-end provision of services to clients in the art world, including trust structuring and estate planning services, art-secured lending, financing and philanthropic services.

Prior to joining U.S. Trust, Evan was the U.S. Art and Finance leader for Deloitte Consulting. Previously, Evan served as a U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer in Washington, D.C., and the Middle East, advising the Pentagon, NATO and Joint Staff on bilateral intelligence-sharing agreements with Middle East allies.

Evan earned his undergraduate degree in Economics from the U.S. Naval Academy. He also holds a Master’s degree in Classics from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and a Master’s degree from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Evan speaks regularly on art and exotic asset classes at major art fairs and investment conferences worldwide. He is a frequent media contributor to national news organizations regarding the intersection of art and finance, and supports a number of arts organizations.