Bidding Tips and Techniques

The first thing you need to know is that we want you to get a good deal on all our auction items. I know that most auctioneers want bids to go sky high but our goal here is to give you great items at great prices. The following tips are going to help you accomplish just that!

1) Watch Lists: The beauty and perils of these explained.

When you go to the auction you will see that you are able to put items onto a "watch list". Watch lists make it easy to keep track of only the items you are interested in. You can simply pull up your watchlist and never enter into the auction listings again. This is a beautiful feature.

However, there are perils!

The first problem is that in many cases I may post two or more of the same item. For example I always post at least 3 pounds of "Mixed Cardstock". If you only add 1 of those 3 pounds to your watchlist you are in for trouble. I see almost 90% of the time one pound (the first one listed) go for almost double what the other two pounds go for. This is due to the fact that most people only put the first pound listed on their watch list and NOT the other remaining two pounds. There can be massive bidding going on between 3 or more bidders on the same item and the other two pounds of the same item sit there untouched! Bottom Line: When you operate only by watch lists and you don't add in all the duplicate listings you are probably going to wind up paying more.

The second peril is that I post additional pounds/items during the auction to keep the prices from going through the roof. If you are operating only with a watch list then you will never know about those newly listed items. Therefore, it is always a good idea to surf through the auction at least once a day!

2) Proxy Bidding: This is a good thing!

First I will give a simple explanation of Proxy Bidding. Think of a real auction in the real world that you simply cannot attend. You have a luncheon or something to go to so you send a friend in your place. You tell your friend that you simply will not pay more than a certain amount- lets say $10.00. You also instruct your friend that you want to pay the smallest amount possible so "don't just go there and raise your paddle and say $10.00". You say "start out at the reserve price and see what happens".

Well our proxy bidding system acts just the same. With our auction your friend is our Auction Program. You can enter a limit bid (aka proxy Bid) of $10.00 and then walk away. The Auction Program will automatically bid the reserve and if no one else bids on it you will win that item at the reserve price. If someone does bid then the Auction Program will go up by small increments as needed. The only way you will lose the item is if someone else put in a bid higher than $10.00.

Be honest with yourself! There is no reason to set a low proxy if you really plan to increase it later. Type in the highest amount you are willing to pay. It is safe as nobody can see your Proxy "high limit" Bid!

If you set a proxy bid and you have unplanned company show up or your computer crashes and you can't get back to the auction, it doesn't matter. The Auction Program is taking good care of you! Proxy Bidding means you can walk away from the computer and still be participating in the auction. I highly recommend using it as you will never have to worry about missing out on an item that you really want.

3) The following is for paper items only- Do your homework!! I do not sit back and cheer when we see items going for more than retail. It actually is upsetting as I know you could just jump over to our web site catalog and buy it for a lot less. PLEASE do a little research before you bid. If you are unsure if an item is available in our web site catalogs you can easily go over and do a little window shopping at our web site. Our web site is: www.CaliforniaPaperGoods.com Just type the name of the paper into the search and see if it comes up.

4) Winning Bids When going to a Super Auction you are bidding against 85 to 175 other people. You will probably not win all your bids. If you are at an "Invitation Only" auction you probably will win a great deal of your bids as you are only bidding against 15-25 other people. Be careful about setting too many bids at an "Invitation Only" auction expecting to lose most of them- you wont! At the end of an auction you could be very surprised with size of your Grand Total.

The same thing goes for the Super Auction. Be sure to bid on a number of items so you are not stuck with a huge shipping vs. product cost if you only win 3 items. Even if you use Proxy Bidding it is best to check in at the last minute on Sunday to see that you have won enough items to make it worth while.