Aquarian Sports Cards Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 (edited) Over 1000 lots, all graded books are CGC. Hundreds of raw Silver age Batman, Superman etc. NO RESERVES and low starting bids. Auction ends August 9th!http://www.birminghamauctioneers.com Post any questions you might have and I will be happy to answer them! Scott Russell Birmingham Auctioneers Edited August 9, 2020 by Aquarian Sports Cards end date added Link to post Share on other sites
Sweet Lou 14 Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 It's always exciting to see a new place to buy comics -- or at least, one I hadn't heard of before. I took the time to register on your site and hope you don't mind some constructive feedback. First, as far as I could tell the site would not allow me to see the items up for sale in your auction without registering (creating an account) on the site. Personally, I would rather see if the site carries the sort of items I'm interested in before getting myself on somebody's mailing list. But my curiosity was enough to overcome this obstacle. The actual registration process itself was a bit over-engineered, with multiple email confirmation steps and a 24-hour wait for the final email telling me I was "enabled for bidding." Then when I went to the site, it told me that my user name and password weren't recognized. I decided not to bother trying to reset my password until I got a better look at things. Overall, it wasn't a great first impression. Despite the password problem (which tells you your password is invalid on EVERY page load), I at least got to see the books themselves. From what I could see, there were some low- to mid-grade slabs and lots of raw books. Nothing I was looking for, but YMMV. The real problem is that the site is not designed to sell comic books. The thumbnail view of the items up for auction shows title and issue, but not grade -- you can expand the image to see the grade on the slabbed issues, but for the raw books the grade is buried in the lot description on the book detail page. Worse, it's obvious that whoever is grading these books doesn't really know comics grading. I opened up five raw books -- and of the five, four said "Condition is GOOD" and the fifth said "Condition is FAIR." Yes, these are legitimate comics grades but they weren't being applied accurately. The books in question were probably more in the 4.0 - 6.0 range, not 1.0 - 2.0. There is also no ability to search or sort by grade or by raw vs. slabbed, which I would consider the bare minimum search / sort criteria for comics. Anyway, I hope this feedback is helpful to you in improving the site and making it more welcoming and better tailored to the comics market. Link to post Share on other sites
Aquarian Sports Cards Posted July 24, 2020 Author Share Posted July 24, 2020 Hi Sweet Lou. Once you went through the registration process (which is pretty involved, but in this day and age I feel account security is a good thing) you shouldn't have any problems signing in. The "24 Hour Approval" is just so someone doesn't register at 3am and expect to get in immediately. I do have to sleep some time, and approval is manual, in your case you actually registered before the above post, and indeed before the auction opened which may have been why you couldn't see anything, the auction isn't viewable until the opening time. However, when you go to www.birminghamauctioneers.com click on the "auction" link and you can browse all our auctions past and present without singing up or signing in. I am always on the page, unsigned in, so I can see what the customer is seeing. You can also use this link: https://birminghamauctioneersbid.com/Lots/Gallery if you are somehow still having problems. But I stress you do NOT have to register to view our auctions. Kind of surprised that your mad at a company for undergrading their books. I know a big pet peeve of mine is getting stuff that is WORSE than the assigned grade. However our images must be fairly good for you to judge our grading so harshly. Most lots have multiple images, all of which can be enlarged. when you click on an item there is a left to right scroll to view the individual images. You can search by any term you like in our search feature, but the auction starts off with all the graded books in front so searching by raw or graded didn't seem that crucial. When you enter a term, it will return results for listings that use the term. For instance "CGC" would return all the graded books. "Batman" would return all the books with Batman. You can chose to search just title or title and description. I'm sorry you had such difficulty using the site. It is a platform used by several major auction houses (much bigger than me) and I am pretty happy with how it functions. It's not perfect, and there are features I would like to see as well, but I do have thousands of users who seem to get around in it pretty well. Thanks for the feedback, and chance to address your concerns. Hopefully some of my tips help. Link to post Share on other sites
Sweet Lou 14 Posted July 24, 2020 Share Posted July 24, 2020 (edited) I do appreciate the response, and I didn't mean to come across as harsh in my comments. I'll send you a PM with a brief follow-up. I truly hope my comments help and I wish you well. For the record, I encourage anyone reading this to check out the site as there are a large number of books up for auction that will suit a broad range of collecting interests and tastes. Edited July 24, 2020 by Sweet Lou 14 Link to post Share on other sites
Aquarian Sports Cards Posted July 24, 2020 Author Share Posted July 24, 2020 It's all good Lou. I honestly like when people ask questions publicly because someone else might be sitting there with the same question and not ask it. Also saying our grading is overly strict certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from checking us out! Sweet Lou 14 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Aquarian Sports Cards Posted July 30, 2020 Author Share Posted July 30, 2020 Someone just asked about shipping vs pick up. Shipping is actual postage plus $5, and we normally take a small loss on it. Pick up is always an option and can give you a great competitive edge if bidding on a large quantity of books or on some of the bulk lots. Good Luck! Link to post Share on other sites
Aquarian Sports Cards Posted August 4, 2020 Author Share Posted August 4, 2020 Only a few days left and TONS of bargains still. Lots of Silver Age Superman and Batman Titles for $1 a book. Tons of Bronze age lots and modern lots as low as 5¢ per book. The auction goes into extended bidding at 10pm Sunday night August 9th. Any item that has no bids or only 1 bid closes immediately at 10pm. Any item with 2 or more bids is extended 15 minutes. Every time a bid is place on that item it extends 15 minutes. This continues until the item has no bids for 15 minutes. To be eligible to place a bid on an item in the extended bidding period you must have bid on that item prior to 10pm Sunday August 9th. So if you ware watching a bunch of items hoping to make a last minute bid make sure you leave yourself enough time to get them all in before 10pm! There are dozens of lots with no opening bid, as low as $1 and NO RESERVES!!! Link to post Share on other sites
Aquarian Sports Cards Posted August 9, 2020 Author Share Posted August 9, 2020 Last day, closing begins at 10pm Eastern Time tonight. You must have bids in on any item you are interested in BEFORE 10pm to be eligible to bid on that item in extended bidding. http://www.birminghamauctioneers.com Good luck! Link to post Share on other sites
