ME Club silent auctions

I'm looking to organise a silent auction (or similar concept) for our club members to bring along their unwanted tools, castings and parts to auction to other members. As we wouldn't have any real overheads I thought of charging a nominal fee to register as a buyer or seller (say, £1) for the clubs coffers.

Broadly my idea was to have an envelope with each item, then allow registered bidders to put their offer on a note they place in the envelope. Highest offer over reserve wins the item at the end of the evening. I've not attended a silent auction myself, so I'm going on second hand information as to how this might work. Improvements to my accuracy of understanding is welcomed.

Does anyone have any experience of running one of these please? Are there any pitfalls to avoid? Obviously I'd like to keep the admin side as simple as possible so people are not waiting around for ages to find out the results.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Jon.

Seems an excellent idea, John

My only experience of a ‘Sealed Bid’ Silent Auction was decades ago, when I bought my BCA from the local College.

The principle seems fine, but I would recommend that you consider the issue of probity [i.e. being seen to do the right thing], and put some mechanism in place whereby the bids could be independently reviewed if anyone protests.

MichaelG.

A good point. Maybe insisting that all items must have a reserve price, and that Caveat Emptor applies and therefore people to carefully inspect items before bidding. I'll have a look into the finer details on that side, thank you.

Another 2 points, the organiser/administrator should not be allowed to bid, and what happens if you get 2 bids the same?

Dave

May work for single items but hopeless, I would suggest, for multiple identical or very similar ones.

Dave, good point, about the 2 bids the same, however I will be bringing and bidding so will have to find a way of being isolated from the process to keep things fair!

NDIY, we are not a huge society and I doubt we will have piles of stock inbound,

Our camera club does not charge for entries but does expect 10% of the successful bid for club funds. It's surprising how many sellers donate all the bid

It's also surprising how many items will turn up every year

Roy

you are overthinking it, whats wrong with an ordinary auction?

My radio club has a 'junk' sale every year (I use the term 'junk' loosly).

if the seller wants a minimum price, that is stated before offers/bidding otherwise goes to whoever wants it/highest bidder.

I did wonder about that but some of our lot are a retiring bunch and might not want people to know what they are spending, or if things haven't sold! It's worth considering though. It would certainly be easier I think.

Our ME Society holds a bring and buy event each year , members bring goods of all sorts , though mainly items useful in the workshop , and one of our number acts as auctioneer! .

All proceeds go to the Society.

Without question, this is one of our most well attended and fun evenings in our calendar, no one goes home without at least a smile on their faces , but then the member doing the auctioning has been doing it for a good few years and conducts the process with immense humour.