What's up with the auctions recently?

[chris_todd]

It seems like nobody wants to buy anything anymore. Each of the last three meetings or so, there have been numerous plants that would not have sold at all unless the auctioneers bullied people into buying them for $1. Seriously, I got five stems of beautiful rotala macrandra for $1, and only because nobody else would bid on it. What's up with that???

Are everyone's tanks so full that no one is interested in buying plants? Do we need to actively recruit newbies so we have some empty tanks to fill?

When Amy and I first joined (last October), there was ridiculous competition and numerous bidding wars, and a bag of plants that went for less than $5 was considered a bargain, regardless of what the plant was. But recently, anything that goes for $5 or more is a rarity.

We've been in the club less than a year, so maybe this is part of a cyclical pattern we can't recognize - does this happen every Spring and Summer? Or could this have something to do with the one bag per species rule? (Although that would be counterintuitive, because knowing there will be fewer bags, and knowing they will be more full should lead to higher bids, and more bidders, so that can't be it). The last meeting where I can remember real bidding competition was at Viktor's house. That was 7 months ago (granted, we missed the February and June meetings).

I'm just concerned that people will stop bringing things to the auction if they repeatedly see their cool, interesting, valuable plants receive no bids, or go for only $1. I'm concerned it could hurt the club. Should I be?

[Ben Belton]

It seems to me that posts on the forum overall are down too. It might just be that its the summer when people are doing other things and the aquariums are on the back burner.

I just completely tore down an aquarium, so I'll be needing plants sometime. G has agreed to be a remote bidder for me.

[krisw]

Chris, thanks for posting with your concern. The board has been having a similar discussion, so ideas are welcome. By and large, spring/summer is definitely a lull in the club for both attendance and auctions. This is why CCA doesn't even bother meeting during the summer except for some field trips here and there.

It does worry me that folks are hesitant to try new or different plants. Try plants, kill some, grow others, but at least try. As Dave reminds us, if you bought the same plants online, you'll often spend up to $5/stem or even $10/stem (that's per stem) on some of these plants that sell for $.25/stem in our auctions. The whole low light or high light thing is hard to judge because often times the person selling the plant is only keeping one or the other. You'll never know if it'll grow until you try it in your own conditions.

I agree that I hope it rebounds next month once kids are back in school. Otherwise, we're always open to suggestions on how to improve the club, and the auction is one of those things.

[PaulS]

I think it's just a Summer lull too. From my experience, the auctions are usually more active when the meetings have more newer attendees present. The newer folks are usually the ones anxious to grab up the bargains. The last meeting was mostly club veterans...

[John G]

I’ve posted about the auctions before, and I’ll jump in again here, even though I probably have a minority view about the auctions.

First, they are too long. Something has to be done to cut down the percentage of the meetings that are spent trying to get people to bid $1 for yet another bag of Anubias barteri. Their length is connected, I think, to Chris’ worry about the auctions. Suppose someone wants a stem plant for their aquarium, like I did at the July meeting. There might be five people there who want stem plants, but if there are 20 bags of stem plants offered the bids are not going to be very high. But if there were only three bags, then I’ll wager the bids would be more in line with the value of the plants. For example, at the July meeting I got some Limnophila sp. wavy for my aquarium for $2 or $3—I would have been willing to pay two or three times that amount, but didn’t need to. By the time that came up for bids, most everyone who had a need or desire for stem plants had already bought one or two of them.

I think that reducing the length of the auctions would both make the meetings more enjoyable, and increase the price paid per bag of plants--two desirable goals.

[krisw]

John, I agree with your sentiment that we'd like to shorten the auction. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

[John G]

Since I have suggested several times that the length of the auctions should be reduced let me make a suggestion as to how that could be accomplished:

Appoint a knowledgeable member to be in charge of the auctions. That person could go through all of the items brought for auction and divide them into two groups: The first would be the unusual plants, or any plant that this person thought would be valuable to members. Set some upper limit on the number that could be put in this category, perhaps 25. The rest would be put for sale by a silent auction. The items in the silent auction could have papers by them allowing people to write their names and bids on the papers, so others could see the bids and add a larger one if the wanted to. I image most plants would get as much at a silent auction as they would in the present set-up.

Of course we don’t want to replace the time now used by the auction with time setting up a silent auction, and getting the bids in. It might be necessary for members to email the “auction expertâ€

[eleontie]

More often we see just one bag of "rare, you would not find this anywhere else" plants go for 1 or 2 bucks.
I am really maxed out of space, I have most of the plants I can grow or keep track of, I really do not have room for room for almost nothing else - I think that is the problem for most of us.
While that happens we do not need to worry about multiple bags of common plants ... I would rather give the plants away at GWAPA than toss them in the garbage.

Eugen

[PaulS]

We could limit the number of items per person to something like 3 items. Of course, this would exclude club donations so if someone had more than three items, the surplus items of their choice would be club donations.

This could have two benefits:
1) Shorten the auctions
2) Increase club donations and meeting revenue

There could be negative effects too, but it may be worthy a try.

[Ben Belton]

Would it help you to do the auction every other or just every third meeting?

Maybe it would help if I donated some of my plants with bladderwort and everyone will eventually have to tear down their aquariums and start over