Quotes About Auctions

I think there are a lot of honest people doing honest business on online auctions. But the control on these Web sites is pretty minimal.

I am currently doing about 30 charity auctions a year.

I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices, and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

Auction houses run a rigged game. They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are. In a gallery, works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them.

I hate art auctions.

Auctions create greater price discovery and liquidity, resulting in a very meaningful final auction price. If you were building a securities exchange today, an auction would be a core feature.

It's a great advantage to be able to play people off against each other, isn't it? You go to Christie's and get a quote on something. And then you go to Phillips' and you tell them what Christie's has given you. I like auctions for artists.

I was never like, "collect, collect," like people who go to auctions. I never spent a serious amount of time because I don't have any time!

'Reinventing the Bazaar,' by John McMillan, is a great and fun introduction to the wild variety and importance of markets throughout history and around the world. I finally understood how a Middle Eastern souk actually works economically and how to compare that to modern-day telecom-spectrum auctions. I love that book.

My theory with the auctions has been to try to make them like a party, like a social event. If people are having a good time, talking with their friends, they're much more likely to bid.

By March 2010, we would phase out the auctions completely.

The auction houses seemed not as dull as their financial counterparts on Wall Street, where parents of daughters imagined glass celings and bottom patting.

I love going to tag sales, to auctions.

It should be noted that the Honorable Guild of Evil Warlords has worked very hard to counter the negative stereotype of its members. After several dozen bake sales and charity auctions, someone suggested that they remove the word evil from the title of their organization. The suggestion was eventually rejected on account of Gurstak the Ruthless having just ordered a full box of embossed business cards.) The

The block had small offices and an outdoor arena where weekly slave-labor auctions were held. The slavery was permitted under an 1850 California law that allowed white people to buy Native American children as "apprentices," and to "bid" on Native Americans who were declared "vagrant," and oblige them to work off the cost of the bid. (The law, known as Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, was not repealed entirely until 1937.)

I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices, and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

THE BUSINESS OF SELLING SLAVES had been changing in Charleston. It was no longer as picturesque as it had been when William Makepeace Thackeray first visited. In 1856, the city decided the auctions near the Old Exchange and Custom House were out of hand, and the various slave brokers started opening up their own showrooms, with pens outside to hold the chattel.

The fish auctions at Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Scrabster and Kinlochbervie are bustling and successful, with good landings of fish from the north all the way to Norway.

My other hobby, because I just love any job with a gavel, is auctioneer. And I so often have presided over charity auctions in New York that many years ago Sotheby's sent me my own gavel. Now, the Sotheby's gavel is infinitely more elegant--it came in a little velvet bag, with "Sotheby's" inscribed in gold. It hangs in my library. I feel that everyone has occasion to use a gavel at various times everyday, they just don't think of it.

Our gutsy view of the world is that with time, there will be three auction houses: two serving the upper end of the market and Paddle8, serving the middle market.

Auctions typically are an opportunity for you to be able to acquire what you're looking for at a lower price; typically, the auctioneer sets the opening price at much lower than the retail price and certain interest develops and as more people come in it drives the price up.

Auction houses run a rigged game. They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are. In a gallery, works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them.

If you want to deal in foreclosures, auctions, and tough deals, you have to sit in court. Evaluate. Learn about how to buy cheaply and wisely.

Real estate auctions offer benefits to real estate investors, whether they are buying or selling.