Well our auction is fast approaching. We have sent out over 600 letters with great responses. What really surprised me is some of the big companies that I felt sure would send something sent us a rejection letter. But over all it's going great. Next comes the local knocking on doors. This is our first auction so it has pretty well been hunt and peck but..... we still have a few questions.

1.Do you find having a theme for your auction helps?
2.Do you use a real auctioneer or someone that can draw a crowd with his/her humor and maybe get you more money for a idem. We have a guy who is really great/ everyone knows him and has volunteered to do it. WHich why is the best?
3. Is it best to sell each item individual or say in a basket (say food coupons, movie rentals etc.)

Thanks for all the help here and I can honestly say this is the best place that I have found to get answers and help regarding our PTO. Thanks again.

I've been involved in auctions for a few different organizations. For the PTO, ours is always a silent auction, but we do have both theme baskets and individual items. (But we don't have a "theme" for the event.) For our annual church auction we have the bigger items auctioned by an auctioneer, and then tables full of things for the silent auction as well. (Both running concurrently in the same recreation hall.)

If you are going to have a real auction and have access to someone who can really play the crowd, that should help increase bids and will also make the whole thing more entertaining.

As far as baskets or individual, it just depends on the item and the value. If you don't want to use the lower value items in a silent auction,then you may want to group some of them. You'll also have to watch the time. The auctioneer will need time to introduce the item, describe it, conduct the auction, and award the winner. If you have 20 items, that's one thing. If you have 80, you may be there half the night. (Hence the reason for the combination used at our church.)

Well we are over the 200 mark in donations. We have everything from coffee baskets to weekend packages and everything under the sun in-between. We were planning on starting the sale around 6 and hopefully it would be over with by 10. We are also still beating the bushes for more donations. My question is does silent auctions usually bring in more or less then a regular auction with bidding on the idems? JHB thanks for your input into this.

I'd sure like to hear about your experience when you are all done with this. I'll bet you have some valuable info to share.

Sorry, I don't know how the amounts compare, and I'm not an auction expert. However, I just can't imagine how you could get through 200 items in that timeframe. Some take longer than others, but say you average only 3 minutes each (a very short time!), that's still 10 hours worth of non-stop auctioning.

Please report back when you are done, so we can all benefit from your experience. And, good luck!

Well we are really keyed up about it and going strong. I think that the time won't be a problem. I know that from past experience (I used to be in the auction business) you can move items fast. If say we don't get a bid one a particular item I think I will set it back and use it for a raffle later in the year but I don't think that will happen. Most of the items that have came in have been high value items. But we will see... I'll let you know how everything goes. We are also having our carnival that day so it will be busy busy I'm sure

Here are some advantages of having a professional auctioneer do your auction:
*Their experience will provide a faster paced auction. *Their knowledge of values of items sold will enable them to know what starting price to ask for as well as how high the bidding should go. *Non-professionals will often lose track of who the bidder is or just mess up on what the current bid is at. Professionals also will keep going back to the previous bidders to keep them in the bidding. *Experienced fund raising auctioneers can also help in the auction planning with unique ideas that have worked well in the past regarding what sells well along with many other experiences that will help raise more money. I would recommend that you limit the live auction to 45 items or less, with the better items, and put the other items in a silent auction. At regular estate type auctions, a professional auctioneer will sell 100-125 items per hour, but at fund raising auctions may slow down to about half that speed. My experience has been that live auction items will average 60-75% of real value, compared to 40% or less for silent auction items. If you are thinking about doing an auction and need ideas for getting things to sell at no cost to the organization, email me direct norman@auctionads.com I hope this helps give you some auction ideas.