Anyone ever thought about your own auction house?

I am starting to wonder about it. And if it is a good viable way to make money selling your items you get out of other auctions and sells? As well as making a commission on other people's stuff. Could you do storage auctions and an auction house with a few people, and I dont mean 15 or more either?

Just some things I am throwing around in my head.

Thanks

jross intersting topic. I was thinking the same thing recently. I love that show gallery 64 or auction kings or whatever its called.

In my area, Chicago, I property is so expensive that I don't think you coudl justify having a business thats open maybe 3 nights a week and the rest of the time is essentially just a storage space thats sitting idle.

I suppose there's ways you could open other revenue streams like being a we sell your stuff on ebay store, doing construction or restaurant liquidation sales during weekday business hours and doing the auction house stuff in the evenings a few days and a weekend night a week but still it would be tough.

The other thing most auction houses are in smaller towns where its actually as much a social event as it is an auction. In bigger cities there's so much other stuff to do bars, clubs, shows, concerts, etc I dont know if people would come out to an auction on a Friday or Saturday night.

I love the concept though. I would love to have an auction house with unique items, serve drinks,et cand have it be a social event as well as auction.

I have had this idea recently too. I have been to about four local "merchandise" auctions trying to find a place to sell a truckload or so of items too inexpensive to sell on Craigslist. None of the auctions are convenient to my area of town and none of them were handling the used items (mostly food and the cheap new made in China stuff). So....I came up with the idea of starting one in my area.
Originally, I tried to get my brother in law to go to auction school to get his license but the schools are not convenient and the cost is around $1500.00 so he isn't likely to do it. I have a full time job so I don't have 2 weeks to go to auction school.
I am thinking of contacting one of the auction companies that run the merchadise sales and seeing if one of them would come run an auction in my area if I could locate a building.
What I would really like to do is get a building large enough to have a store on one side and an auction area on the other.
If any of this gets off the ground, I will post an update.

Been thinking about it for awhile.Great way to rid of your own things and get the commision on others.

Then I guess that settles it. Start saving more of my money and open an auction house. Now only decision is do I go to auction school myself and save myself the money in the long run, or quit while I am ahead with all the stuff I am doing and just hire in an auctioneer.

  I would look around for a local  and/or out of work auctioneer , check the state lic. board for someone near you ,  ask around  how much to to call an auction for you .

Locally here we have a online/live auction company that will do ALL of the dirty work for you. When I hung up my wrench (quit being a mechanic) I loaded the tool box on to a trailer, got a quote from a pawn shop for the whole thing and hauled it out to the action company and told them I wanted what the pawn shop quoted me out of the lot.

He went through the drawers quickly and giggled. I'll get you 3 times that.


Turns out he got 4 times that out of it. his people  cleaned everything, snapped photos and handled EVERYTHING, collecting payments, pickup.

I got about 50% of what retail was on the lot. Almost unheard of when it comes to used tools. I made money on a lot of the tools since i bought them on e-bay or used.

The auction house charged the buyers 8% and me 2% I think it was.

Find one of those types in your area. They tend to do large local liquidations. They have the customer base, the staff and the marketing to get you the most $ for it.


Or, watch TV for a while, I suspect a spin off of storage wars will be Hessers auction house

Hey guys, this is my first post....

I live in New England and there are tons of little 'country' auctions out here; literally like several every night to choose from.  Most of the auction houses have an auction only once a week, and a few of them start with an 'early bird' auction.  That's where box and whole table lots of things get auctioned off, usually starting at around $10, to flea marketers, ebayers, and such.  It seems to me that they get a lot of their merchandise, especially for the early bird, at storage auctions.  I don't think they actually bid on storage units themselves, but I'm pretty sure the guys who do bring their merchandise to the auction houses on consignment.

Running an auction house is definitely a full-time business.  I know that when they're not auctioning things off one day a week, they do appraisals, house clean-outs, consignments, sorting, etc...  Definitely good money in it though, most places charge about 25% consignment to sell your stuff, plus they charge 15-18% buyer's premium.  So they make money from both the sellers and the buyers.  Add whatever they charge for house clean-outs, delivery, etc....  Seems like a decent profit to me, but definitely a full-time gig.

Then I guess that settles it. Start saving more of my money and open an auction house. Now only decision is do I go to auction school myself and save myself the money in the long run, or quit while I am ahead with all the stuff I am doing and just hire in an auctioneer.

That would be a great idea! Hire a radio jox in your area to auction the stuff off. The jox could also talk about it on his show to get people to show up