Fact: Selling Concert Posters at Auction Requires You to Find TWO Buyers for Each Item- NOT ONE!

When you decide to sell at auction, you need to make a judgement call about whether there is likely to be TWO serious buyers for your consignment, not just ONE!

Let me explain this often overlooked and misunderstood concept: 

Let’s say you have a really great poster you wish to sell at auction that you believe is worth $5000. You consign the piece to auction, bidding begins, and one of the collectors bidding in the auction- let’s call him Collector A- immediately locks in on your poster.

While the general consensus is your poster is worth about $5,000, Collector A is willing to pay up to $7,500. 

Why?  

Because Collector A has been searching for this poster for over two years and has no idea when if or when he will ever get a chance to find another.

So far, so good!

But unfortunately, this is the only collector that truly has his heart set on acquiring your poster. There is another collector bidding in the auction, - let’s call him Collector B - that understands the $5,000 value of your poster, but it’s only of interest to him if it goes cheap, say for $2,500. 

The result is that poster sells for $2,600 to Collector A, far below what you hoped it would bring, far below what it is generally known to be worth, and worst of all, far below what Collector A was willing to pay! Situations like this play out exactly this way in every auction ever held, and are more common than the exception. 

The moral of the story is that for an item to bring “market levels” at auction, there must be two bidders that want to pay market rate, not just one. Otherwise, your consignment will fall flat.