We had are big auction week this week, auctions every day of the week and two caravan runs. The bad news, crowds have grown again since June and early July. Had one auction with about 80 people and another with about 50. The others were between 15 to 30. Earlier this month the crowds were dropping to under 20 and even single digits at some auctions.
The old timers still seem to be gradually fading away. The crowd this week was generally less then 6 old timers (pre-tv shows), maybe 1-2 since tv shows, a dozen or less that are 3 month newbies, and all others are fresh faces. There really are no 3 month to 12 month "veterans" that I can think of that are buying units at all.
I mentioned the trend of the new crop of newbies NOT bringing flashlights out and that seems to be continueing. There is also a tendency among this new batch to try to convince the "old timers" and everybody else that they have a lot of knowledge in the re-sale business. A lot of platitudes about how best to sell things, and trends in the business, and how things use to be, yada yada..., From people we've never seen in are life on the auction trail. I suppose forums like this and You Tube are making everybody a "virtual reality expert" on this industry.
Prices are slooowwlllyyy edging downward, but the quality of units this week was uncommonly horrible. Not sure whats worse. People 6 months ago dropping $1000 on a $250 units that does have some good stuff showing, or people now dropping $200 on what should be $20 junk units.
I did manage to sneak in a get, in my opinion, the best unit of the week for a low-low price. I think everybody got so use to seeing junk and paying between $100-$250 for them all week, that when this unit came up they thought anything above $250 was too much.
Haven't had a chance to sort through it yet, but just from loading it up and cleaning it out it looks like it's been in storage since the early 1990's (bills, calendars, thick layer of dust, etc.) the furniture is 1920's to 1960's, & just a quick peak in the furniture drawers and boxes looks like a lot of the stuff is circa 1970's-1980's and hasn't really been touched since. This unit should be real interesting to go through. I think it's going to be a little bit like going through a time capsule.