Spotlight: Online Auctions

Specialty Auction Sites

Specialty auctions are the place to find unique and interesting as well as hard to find deals.  Also, they offer a better selection on the categories they offer than do the auction supersites.

1. Finertimes - Finertimes is a specialty site offering modern and vintage watches and cameras. By nature of its items, only about 500-600 items are listed at any given time. Finertimes acts solely as a venue for buyers and sellers to meet, and does not in any way guarantee the legitimacy of the seller, or provide any other insurance or guarantee. It does, however, require the seller to be a member of one of the 2 major watch seller associations/guilds and requires the seller to offer a 3-day return policy. By all impressions, the items are NOT for auction, but for sale at a fixed price, although direct negotiations may be possible. The majority of sellers appear to be reputable, in their descriptions and grading of condition of items. Curiously, there is no option to perform a keyword search for a particular watch.

2. Heritagecoin.com - Heritagecoin seems to be the world’s largest numismatic dealer and auctioneer, and publishes one of the most widely read coin periodicals, Heritage Insider. This coin super-site offers direct sale from the Heritage $20mn collection, Internet-only auctions of coins, Internet access to floor auctions before opening, and various resources and archives on coin collecting and pricing. The seller cannot direct-auction an item, rather, Heritage first buys the item from the seller and subsequently sponsors their own auction. As an alternative, the seller may consign their collection to Heritage for auction. Overall, this site seems to be the place to go if one is of the coin collection strain.

3. Stampfinder - Stampfinder acts as a virtual stamp mall where buyers and vendors can meet to make purchases and sell stamps. The main feature is a search engine which lists online dealers selling stamps at a fixed price. In addition, a “dealer mall” is available which links to other stamp dealers. Finally, there are online classified ads for both want and for sale, a stamp yellow pages, stamp supply catalog, and various other info. sources.

4. Winebid.com - Winebid offers auctions on wine bottles and lots consigned mostly from private collectors. The site attempts to verify as much as possible the legitimacy of the vendor before auctioning their wine. The choice of wines is varied, and a nice “autobid” option allows the bidder to set a maximum price and have the site automatically bid up to that level. In addition, the bidder pays 12.5% commission to winebid above the final hammer price for all sales. Winebid takes responsibility for shipping the product to the bidder and for collecting payment.