Bidding on the ‘Help for Heroes’ Auction

As mentioned here we’re conducting an auction on behalf of Help for Heroes this coming weekend, 15th-17th October. Bidding on this auction will be a little different to usual – so watch out!

• Until Monday morning, bidding is ‘blind’ – no-one will be able to see what others have bid. Instead you will be able enter a single maximum amount you’re prepared to pay for each lot via a special form (much quicker than normal bidding – we hope to roll the feature out more generally in the near future) and then submit all your bids at once. Bids placed at this point are final, and, whilst you can enter new, higher bids, you can’t reduce or remove a bid.
• Come Monday we’ll start the auction. You’ll receive an email to tell you where you stand compared to other bids
• If you’re the high bidder, sit tight and keep an eye on the auction throughout the day. We will of course let you know if you’re outbid. If you’re not winning when the auctions start you can bid in the normal way to increase your bid.
• When the auction closes we’ll let you know whether you’re the winning bidder. All auctions in this sale will close at the same time though – so we advise entering a single, maximum bid early in the day and leaving it to the site software to bid on your behalf as the auctions close.

  Good luck – and remember your bids are for an excellent cause.

  

A couple of tasting notes

We’ve been quiet on the blog front (preparing for the Fine Wine Fair and organising various forthcoming sales has been taking up all our time). However I wanted to share a couple of notes on some wines which are coming up for sale shortly. Both are Australian Shiraz but are as far removed from the common perception of this wine as one could imagine. Indeed they share far more in common with Syrah from the Northern Rhone or the Languedoc.

Handhorf Hill Shiraz 2005

Dark red centre to crimson rim. Fine, delicately spicy nose with notes of plum, smoke, soy sauce and aniseed. Perfumed. Very fine and poised in the mouth – plenty of fine, delicate tannin and a good acidity underlies ripe but savoury fruit, tea, grilled meat and spice flavours. Real length. This will go on for years I think. 4*

Larkhill Shiraz 2003

Deep red to crimson rim. Very closed at first; a hint of American oak but that’s it. In the mouth this is a little more giving – some spice and red fruit. With time this opens up a little to become higher toned – almost shades of a top notch Rioja but with more pepper and dark spices. On day two the nose is very much in the sous-bois/pepper/black fruit spectrum. Cool and slightly peppery in the mouth, a real note of cooked plum on the long finish. Good wine – no crime to open it now but would be just as happy being forgotten about for a while. 3.5*

Forthcoming Sale Dates

We’ve previously mentioned our move towards doing regular larger sales.  We’re pleased to announce our forthcoming sale dates until the end of the year:

25th June 2010 – 1st July – ‘No Reserve’ 2005 Bordeaux and others

A fine selection of wines including a large collection of 2005 Bordeaux in OWC consigned to sale by a fastidious private seller, all offered on a ‘no reserve’ basis.

Stars lots include 2005 Leoville Las Cases, 2005 La Conseillante 2005 Calon Segur. Also in the sale will be a horizontal of 1996 1st Growths (Latour, Lafite Rothschild, Margaux and Mouton Rothschild) plus a range of mature wines from Australia.

Other Sales will be held on the following dates:

29th July 2010 – 5th August

30th August – 6th September

30th September – 6th October

29th October – 4th November

30th November – 7th December – Christmas Sale

Please contact us if you would like to discuss including your own wines in one of our sales or why not request a valuation?

Available catalogues for forthcoming sales can be viewed via the Forthcoming Sales link on Bid for Wine

Forthcoming Sales & Some Strong Auction Results

Forthcoming Sales

We’re pleased to announce a significant change in strategy for Bid for Wine with the launch of a series of regular large sales. The first, a sale of top end Burgundy including multiple vintages of Ponsot Clos de La Roche, Rousseau Chambertin & wines from Comtes de Vogue commenced on Friday 21st May. Auctions will be closing from 9AM onwards on 28th May.

The new approach will build on our consignment service run from EHD London in Weybridge. This is a full auction service including valuation, photography and collection of wines prior to sale. Until now, when wines were consigned to us for sale, they were normally listed and put up for sale immediately in amongst our standard ‘peer to peer’ auctions. Whilst this works perfectly for odd bottles, increasingly we’re being asked to handle large collections by consignment which requires a different approach. For example the client normally doesn’t want any direct involvement in the sale and the wines need to be visible for longer than simply just the 7 days of a sale.

Going forward we’re going to be focussing on doing larger sales of consigned lots every few weeks. Potential bidders will be able to browse lots for several weeks prior to the sale, either via downloadable catalogues or on the site whilst sellers will benefit from having their wines advertised via routes such as The Saleroom.

Lots in the Burgundy sale can be viewed here.

Results

We have been seeing some very strong results at auction recently with lots often selling close to or above their retail/list prices. Two examples are:

1 x 75cl Chateau d’Yquem 1990 – Sold for £246 (Wine-Searcher £225)

12 x 75cl Mouton Rothschild 2003 – Sold for £3050 (Wine-Searcher £3100)

If you are interested in having your wines valued, why not send us a list (see here) or give us a call on 0207 183 3985?

Other News
If you’re only interested in wines which are sold on consignment or are listed with no reserve price, you can now find them quickly and easily via the facetted navigation on the left of the auction page.

New Feature – Editable Auction Pricing

After a conversation with a client last week I decided that we were missing an obvious feature on Bid for Wine – the ability to edit the pricing of listings.

It’s quite easy to enter a buy now price which is too high (or low), or else to set a starting price at a level where bidders aren’t keen to start bidding (on this see here). Now you can edit the starting and reserve price of your auction listings until a bid is placed. For ‘buy now’ listings or ‘buy now or highest offer’ listings, prices can be edited at any time.

Click ‘Edit’ on your listing

If your listing is an auction, change your starting price (if over £1) and reserve price (if applicable) until the first bid is placed.

If your listing is a ‘buy now’ or ‘buy now/highest offer’ listing, you can change your buy now price and minimum offer price any time up until the listing closes.

Broking via Bid for Wine

Bid for Wine are pleased to unveil an entirely new way for people to sell wine with us – our revolutionary ‘broking list’ option.

The broking list option is an alternative to listing wines for auction. It allows you to set a price at which you are willing to sell your wine but gives the flexibility to negotiate or accept offers around this price.

The process works as follows:

1. You add your wines to our broking list via our selling wizard and set the price around which you’re happy to sell.

2. Wines can be bought immediately at the price asked or potential buyers can make offers. These offers can be accepted, rejected or met with a counter-offer – you only need sell if the asking price is met.

3. All offers from buyers are valid for 48 hours whilst Counter offers are valid for 48 hours or until the lot sells, whichever is sooner.

What are the benefits of this system?

-It is particularly well suited to selling more expensive wines lying in professional storage (these generally have a clear provenance and thus pricing is transparent). Such wines don’t always achieve their maximum potential at auction if buyers aren’t looking for the wine during the running period of the auction.

-It gives you absolute control over pricing – you can choose your price rather than being guided by merchants with a vested interest in setting low prices to achieve as quick a sale as possible.

-Wines can be sold where they are lying (saving you the cost of moving them around prior to sale).

-No need to sell unless your asking price is met – so you can list those wines you’ll probably never drink but aren’t actively looking to sell.

-There are no upfront fees whilst commission is charged at Bid for Wine’s usual low rates.

For example:

Selling Price: £200
Bid for Wine’s charges: £21.30
‘Standard’ broking commission of 15%: £30
You save: £8.70

Selling Price: £500
Bid for Wine’s charges: £47.18
‘Standard’ broking commission of 15%: £75
You save: £27.83

Selling Price: £1000
Bid for Wine’s charges: £90.30
‘Standard’ broking commission of 15%: £150
You save: £59.70

Further details:

• For Sellers
• For Buyers
• Try it now.

A more transparent auction history

One of the challenges when listing rarer or older wines for sale is knowing how to price them. Bidders selling via our large volume consignment auction service are provided with a comprehensive list of estimates as part of the service but for odd bottles many users rely on Wine-Searcher. This can help but in truth many of the higher prices listed are an illusion as they’re from firms who will buy in the stock from other merchants when orders are placed and thus need to price high to ensure they can make a margin. Historical price data on Bid for Wine is a much better indication of the real market price as it reflects real transactions.

Until recently searching our back catalogue of historical prices was awkward as there was no way of ‘interrogating’ the site with a free-text search (e.g. Cape Mentelle Cabernet). From today though this has changed and now you can freely search over 1500 previous auctions in a more fluid, intelligent way via the ‘search closed auctions’ box. This is the first of two important changes in this area – shortly we will also be unveiling a new, more flexible listing type which will help sellers establish the market prices for their wines even more accurately.

New Consignment Service

When we first started Bid for Wine, one of our aspirations was to offer people selling large collections of wine a real alternative to the costly and often slow process of using ‘bricks and mortar’ auction houses. We envisaged a situation where wines are sold in a matter of weeks rather than months, where 15% buyer’s premiums reducing the seller’s profit are thing of the past, where commission is a flat 14%. First though we needed enough people to be using the site.

Six months on we now have over 1100 users from across the world who are permanently on the lookout for interesting wines. If you have a large collection or whole cellar to sell, you can now access this audience and take advantage of Bid for Wine’s low fees and rapid selling time via our Large Collection Consignment Service. To access this and for more details, please log in to your account and see our Selling Large Collections page under ‘Sell Wine’. We hope you’ll agree that this service represents the future!

Some thoughts on helping wines to sell

Watching the patterns behind which wines sell best on Bid for Wine has revealed several simple steps to help get the best prices and the most interest from buyers.

So what’s the secret to generating lots of interest in your wines?

• Pictures generate interest and make your lot stand out amongst other listings. They also reassure potential buyers about the wine you’re selling as it’s possible to see verify the accuracy of descriptions of the ullage, the condition of the label and so forth. This is particularly relevant where the wine is old or rare. Including a photo of a bottle is tricky where you’re listing an unopened OWC (original wooden case) or wine which is In Bond, though a photograph of the case itself is useful and some bonded warehouses will take provide photographs of your wine on request.
• Bids attract other bids. Bidders on auctioned lots like to know that other people think a wine is worth bidding for. They will often be more inclined to bid on lots which already have bids on than those that don’t. You can attract early bids on auctions by setting a low (or no) starting price as people will happily place bids on a well priced lot on the off-chance that they might get a bargain. If the starting price is set just below what you’d like for the wine you’ll lose the interest of these speculative bidders.
• Is your reserve realistic? If you’re selling via an auction listing, wines with a reserve equal to the price at which a wine can be bought from a merchant can be difficult to sell. Potential buyers often expect a discount when buying at auction as they may not have the safeguards (e.g. a returns policy) that they would have when buying from a merchant.
• Sellers who offer buyers a range of collection and delivery options get the most bids. The cost of delivery on a relatively low value lot may make it unattractive so consider offering the buyer the chance to collect the wine from you.
• Tell potential bidders the story behind the wine. People are unlikely to buy very old, very expensive or very rare wines (all of which are targets for forgers) without some reassurance as to where the wine has come from and how it has been stored.

In conclusion a few simple steps can dramatically enhance the likelihood of your wine selling and increase the price you receive for it.