This week’s auction find well illustrates the advantages of checking out local estate auctions. During a recent auction in Puget Sound we found a 1946 Rolex Oyster Perpetual.

Of course it’s every guys dream to have a Rolex, in this case the highest bidder walked away with not only finely crafted timepiece but a piece of history. Just a minor inconvenience that it is going to take a little loving care to get it ticking again!

Still this makes you want to start checking out the list of Xpert Auction websites to see what else we have been missing. While most of the items at local actions get sold to people who live or work nearby, there are these occasional jewels that would be worth taking a little road trip to go pick up!

So, will you and your estate auction clients really make more if you hold the estate Sale online? Ask our Xpert Auction Estates Sale clients. 

"through online auctions, a higher number of items are sold, and both my customers and I win because we both receive higher returns" Says Jason Hill of Movin On Estate Sales of Florida. Jason has been doing estate auctions for over 5 years now and has seen the difference online estate sales can make both to him and his client.​

We Love to hear from our happy clients! Puget Sound Estate Auctions is a located in Washington and serves: Seattle, Bellevue, Federal Way, Kent, Auburn, Tacoma, and Gig Harbor.

Puget Sound Estate Auctions specializes in helping their clients with 

• Online Auctions
• Antique Auctions 
• Estate Sales 
• Estate Buy/Out 
• Estate Auction 
• Senior Downsizing 
• Ranch Liquidation 
• Business Liquidation 

"I absolutely love the way the software is setup." Says Gayla Dahl of Puget Sound Estate Auctions.  

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When researching this week’s “interesting auction finds and Success Stories” I came across some Nike Shoes. While I’ve been able to get a pretty good deal on shoes at Amazon and Ebay, I’ve yet to find Nike Air Max Sq Uptempo Zm Mens Basketball shoes for less than about $100. In fact these Size 9.5 shoes usually go for around $150.00.  Current bid at Sac Valley Auction is $16!.

You can find these shoes and track the bidding at . Nike Air Max Uptempo

Of course one of the drawbacks of finding shoes at an auction is the lack of choices to choose from. Other than a lack of different sizes this particular auction seems to be an exception.

​For example this lot has two pairs the Air Max White/white no 386240 and the White /Silver No 698902 both with the original boxes. Both are stated to be “very lightly worn” giving the idea that they may have been just tried on in the store or brought back without really being used. Either way could put your kid in some Nike Air Max shoes at a great price.

There’s also lot 110 Some Michael Jordan Westbrook shoes. Which are going for $200 at store.nike.com and are currently auctioning for $5.00 Michael Jordan Westbrook.

Once again these are lightly worn but with the original box. 

So, as an auctioneer why would you want to auction shoes? Looking at these prices it would appear the profit margin is pretty low! While this is a great deal for the buyer what’s in it for you?

Good questions. Successful auctions need bidders .....

One undeniable advantage of shopping on the online auction sites of estates sale companies is being able to look for buys on your favorite design styles without leaving the comfort of your home. This is certainly true when you are searching out retro design furniture.  A perfect example is this Midcentury modern reclining chair by designer Milo Baughman and manufactured by Thayer Coggins as seen on this Northern California Auction. https://norcalonlineauctions.com/auctions/redding-estate-sale~400/lot--80---vintage-mid-century-naugahyde-reclining-chair-thayer-coggin-milo-baughman~30737/

​This recliner was manufactured at the height of the Midcentury Modern Design era which is loosely defined as between 1933 and 1965 and is limited by many as between 1947 to 1957, the middle of the 20th century.  

​Milo Baughman was brought in by manufacturer Thayer Coggin in the mid 1950s and is regarded as a highly influential designer of Midcentury modern furniture. 

Auctions are a great place to find rare and one of a kind music instruments. I stumbled across a great find at one of our member actions. A rare 1762 Jacobus Stainer Violin. My wife would love to get her hands on this one! Stainer Violins were one of the most sought after in Europe until the late 1800s. https://sacvalleyauctions.com/auctions/estate-sale-woodland-3~112/lot-80---44-violin---by-jacobus-stainer-~10083/

Unique Features of Jacobus Stainer Violins

• highly skilled craftsmanship, particularly displayed in cut scrolls and occasionally carved heads of lions, angels, or women
• pronounced higher arching of the belly than the back
• Broad lower back
• varnish ranging in color from amber to orange-red, comparable in brilliance to Cremonese varnish​

Recently I was very happy to push out an update to all of our clients websites. This is a new image viewer that actually uses the maximum viewable size on each client's computer. Also it is very easy for the user to go forward and backwards to view the images. This allows the users to see the photos with great detail and large image sizes that fill up the entire screen.

You can try out a sample right now on one of our demo sites.
https://xpertonlineauctions.com

Warren Churulich
Engineer

Sometimes it is necessary to rotate a photo after uploading it to the server. Our software is unique in the way that it rotates photos. If a normal photo size such as 1920px x 1080px is uploaded, our software can rotate it without any loss of information. This means you could rotate the photo an infinite amount of times without any loss of information or re-compression. Normally this does not happen with other software. The way most software works is it rotates the image and compresses the image each time. This has the effect of creating a loss of quality. This is similar to making a photocopy of a photocopy.

After researching this with Microsoft I was able to come up with some great code that will automatically rotate an image without a loss of quality. This is very important for JPEGs. Which is the most common format for images on the web? JPEG.

This update was recently released on all of our clients sites.

Thank you
Warren
Engineer

Recently a new free update was pushed out to each of the clients using Expert Auction Software.

The new update automatically detects image orientation. It will then attempt to rotate based on the orientation of the camera that took the photo.

For instance if a person took a photo holding the camera vertically, then after the photo is uploaded to our server our software will attempt to read special information embedded in the photo/image file that is related to the orientation of the camera. Then based on that information our software on the server will rotate the image.

This has been a great update for some of our users.

Thank you.

Warren Churulich
Engineer

As an Estate Liquidator you understand the need to attract large audiences for your liquidation sales. Large audiences give a better chance that someone will know the value of what you are selling and be in a position to pay a good price for the item being auctioned. People are often willing to pay more for an item that others are also looking to buy. Estate Liquidators and Auction companies that consistently auction their client’s items at a higher price are in demand. While there are many ways to advertise your auction website to attract this large audience, one of the most basic ways is to let the search engines do the work of sending prospective buyers to your auction. 

Unfortunately many auction website designs lack this basic design consideration, the ability to attract search engine traffic, commonly called SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Unlike SEM (Search Engine Marketing), which focuses on advertising on the web to attract visitor, SEO focuses on making your site understandable for the search engines and helping them know what is important on your website.

Choosing the correct Software

Adding the additional information about an item being auctioned on your website takes a little more work and likely you will not need to spend that time for each item being offered. What is important though is that your auction site lets you quickly and easily add that information to the larger and more popular auction items. 

Search engines like Google, MSN, and others use several page attributes to determine how a page is listed in the search engine results and how high it is listed for a given search term. Many of these items are handled automatically by a well designed auction website like we provide to each of our clients. Other aspects can be added by auctioneer simply giving a little more thought and adding a little more information when the more important auction items are added to the auction.

Xpert Auction Websites takes the information you provide for an auction item and ensures that each page on your website has the onpage SEO attributes necessary to help your auction pages rank well in the search engine results. 

Basic SEO Attributes