Auction thoughts

[Alan McKendree <amck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Luongo has asked me to take a survey:

As you may know, there's going to be a benefit for the John Entwistle 
Foundation at B B King's on March 7, at which a number of donated items 
will be auctioned off (list to appear later at jae.com). B B's won't 
allow a auctioneer to come in to do a live auction.  Given that, the 
question to those who will not be attending, which of the following 
would be most attractive and would seem the most fair to you?

1) Don't allow outside bidding.  If you ain't in the house, you don't 
bid.

2) A "sealed bid" auction, where anyone can e-mail in a bid up until a 
certain time, and bids sealed in envelopes are collected at the venue.  
Open them all up at a certain time and compare to the e-mails, and the 
highest one wins.

3) A "silent auction" -- where the name of each item is written on a 
sheet of paper and the sheets are laid out on tables, and anyone can 
walk up and write down their name and their bid up to a certain time -- 
with "proxies" designated to bid on behalf of the highest e-mailed bid. 
(And how should the proxies bid...if they're authorized to bid up to 
$500 and an item is currently $400 with a $10 increment, should the 
proxy write down $410 or $500?)

4) A "silent auction" in which the first bid written on the sheet for 
each item is the highest e-mail bid received for that item, and all 
further bidding would be done by auction attendees.

5) some other method -- specify.

The goal is to have an auction that's fair to everyone and generates a 
good amount of money for the Foundation.

Feel free to e-mail any comments to me or directly to 
bitsamail@xxxxxxxx  Any that I get, I will forward anonymously to Steve 
at the bitsamail address.

Cheers,
Alan
"the average Texan...carries not just a gun but a SHOTGUN."  --Pete 
Townshend, 1967