Ok, here's the insider poop - Sturla is pandering to the Auctioneers board, plain and simple.

I rarely sell on ebay myself anymore, but I do sell stuff every week through a partner in Delaware. Why? Simply because he's been selling in volume for 10 years and has 100% positive feedback and a massive audience. He gets three times what I would expect running my own ebay auction, as long as I feed him really good stuff and help with the research.

As a result of this, though, I am both on ebay and at brick&mortar auctions continuously.

Here's the deal - the brick&mortar auction houses HATE ebay, but at the same time they LOVE the ebay sellers who frequent their sales. It's a totally schitzophrenic situation. Ebay has produced an industry of people who do nothing but go to local auctions in their region, buy like crazy and then resell everything on the bay.

The auctions love these people because they come to every sale religiously and drop thousands of bucks every time.

The auctions HATE these same people because they watch their ebay sales, and see them getting between 3 and 20 times what they paid at the brick&mortar sale.

It drives them nuts, and they want revenge against the people who are willing to work harder for the extra bucks. Essentially, the brick&mortar auctioneers have some juvenile inferiority complex over the whole affair. They see people consistently making good money off of their auctions instead of just taking the stuff home and putting it on a shelf like they're supposed to, and they feel cheated somehow, despite the consistent money they themselves make in the process.

I've personally heard this frustration from many auctioneers, smiling across gritted teeth as they congratulate one of their ebay buyers for a major score on something they bought at their sale for nearly nothing.

The auctioneers need to grow up and get with the 21st century program. They could make just as much money, for themselves and their consignors, by selling on ebay instead of at an auction house. Nobody is stopping them, and the consigners would be very happy to get so much more for their stuff.

But it's MUCH more work to do well on ebay, and requires a whole new skill set that most traditional auctioneers would cringe over.

In a traditional auction, someone calls up with grandma's estate. You pick up the truckload of stuff, unpack it, make a simple list, take some group photos for your website and ads, and that's it until sale day. On sale day, the buyers pick over the stuff, peer at it, hold it, smell it, and draw their own conclusions based on what they know. In most auctions a few things might be well described during the sale itself, but usually in a big sale the hawker or auctioneer knows and cares little about each item, and what you hear over and over is "OK, now on the old glass jar here" or some such.

And the bidding is usually appropriate to the stupid description, unless several savvy bidders know better and get into a contest.

But it's relatively easy money. You put the stuff out, start the bidding, drop the hammer and move on to the next thing. The buyers pay you right there before they can leave with their stuff, and when its all over the nickel man hauls away all the leftover junk. And people come to you with the stuff to start with.

Ebay, on the other hand, is all work if you plan to actually get what something is really worth. EVERY SINGLE THING you put up for auction must first be singled out at a brick&mortar sale as being "good", bid on, won, packed up and taken home. Then it must be unpacked, researched (which can be daunting and expensive), carefully photographed from all sides, authoritatively described and attributed in detail, placed in the correct categories and very accurately and creatively titled.

And then, after you upload and start each auction, you have to be willing to field questions during the sale, send additional photos to serious inquiries, watch for scammers, and pray you did a good job for a week.

Just imagine going to Horst auction and sticking your hand up in the middle of bidding and saying "um, wait, I think that piece is wisenheimer era, not quackadoodle. Can you go and look it up again before I decide to bid any higher?"

Right.

And when the sale is done, you have to collect payment, usually not immediately and usually in a variety of formats. Then YOU have to pack each thing up and ship it to the buyer, and deal with it if something gets lost or broken in shipping.

And then you throw your plastic bins and bubble wrap in your van, drive to the brick&mortar auction and start all over again.
The auctioneers unfortunately don't seem to grasp most of this. All they see is that Bob bought a crock at their sale for $25 and sold it on ebay for $125. And that, to them, is somehow unfair. It just shouldn't be.

And so, in a lame attempt to stop reality and keep things the way they always were, they want it legislated and regulated. They want laws that will make them stop feeling like they're being cheated just because they're too dumb or too lazy to work harder for the good money.

So they call Mike the spike and ask him if he'll shiv the ebayers in exchange for their undying love.... and probably something more as well

Citydweller, you nailed it on the head.

The other thing that comes to my mind is this;

If i call up Horst Auction (close to my house) and want them to sell some stuff for me, I have to:
Have enough to make it worth their while.
Pack it up and take it there with some idea of what it is.
Wait 2 to 3 months to have it go to sale, hope they do a good job promoting it, hope a decent "buying crowd" shows up and then finally get my money less their share.

Or..............I could take the stuff to an Ebay broker store, let THEM research, catalog, index, and take tons of good looking pictures, reach a WORLDWIDE audience and have my items sold in one week if they were priced right.

Hard choice isn't it?
Screw traditional auctioneers. They are fine for the real big stuff, or things you MUST see to really appreciate, other than that, they are outdated.

You either change with the times, or become a casualty of the times.

P.S. Eff Mike Sturla.. errr Snidely Whiplash
Thanks,
Muto

Couldn't have said it better myself, city. But I also think Mr Whiplash is looking at it as a hidden tax. I posted this article on a shot glass collecting website. A fellow collector directed me to another stupid government law in Oregon.

city, what's your ebay name? what do you sell?

As I said earlier, I don't personally sell on ebay under my own account. I sell through a long-established power-seller who has a large audience and consistently gets high prices.

This is yet another subtlety of the ebay world that is lost on most people. You can't just hang out your shingle on the bay and expect the world to notice you and start throwing money. You need to be established and have a reputation, as well as an audience who recognizes you for delivering what they want, consistently. That's a full-time job, and it works the same way as in the brick&mortar world. My ebay guy specializes in consistently delivering quality goods and top quality service via the ebay format, whereas I specialize in doing the same thing but on a face-to-face level. The two approaches are vastly different and require different personality and motivational traits. He likes selling in volume to a vast audience, and I like sitting down with a person over a thing and talking about it, holding it, examining it, personalizing the experience for each client. Different strokes.

As for what I sell? I'll sell anything if it's legal, worth money and I can get it dirt cheap More seriously though, I tend to focus on Early American and Old Country goods, and personally specialize in antique tools, tool-related items and colonial wrought iron because that's what grabs me the most. That being said, being a magpie belies any real ability for self-restraint, and a quick glance across my cluttered desk reveals 1920's character spoons, inkwells, antique padlocks, fountain pens, keys, candlesticks, 1890's hymnals, bottles, folding rules, calipers, chisels, pocket knives, military buttons, a conestoga wagon jack (ok it's not ON the desk, exactly), bottle openers.... and that's just a taste of the stuff "visiting" my desk. Don't even ask for an inventory of the floor surrounding me

I'm staring at some Lancaster shot glasses- Rohrer's, Hollinger, Chas Grove, no Dittuss- bunch of bottles and Deppen Brewing Co stuff. http://www.geocities.com/deppen76/deppenbrewingco.html