So, I decided to try to sell some wine for the first time ever and went with Winebid. Communication and logistics have been top-notch. My wines are now live and I have questions for people who have used Winebid before;
Thanks!
My experience, though yours may vary:
Yes! For me it becomes a game and something of an obsession.
Often. Historically I have seen bids come in a rush in the beginning, a trickle midweek with another rush in the final 6 hours.
Trackers are a mix. Some ultimately bid, while many don’t. Various reasons I presume. Personally, I have tracked a wine I am interested in but think is overpriced for a number of weeks hoping the starting bid drops.
I have never had a wine not sell, though a few have taken 5 or 6 auctions and a price drop or two to sell.
One of the main reasons I decided to partner up with WineBid on the search bar function is because of Russ Mann. Since he’s taken over as CEO he has been absolutely on FIRE to change things there - he listens, he truly cares about what customers like and dislike, what changes need to take place, etc. Every company should get a guy like this to head them up, seriously. I remember reading a ton of complaints here about WineBid, and since Russ took over, it’s all turned a 180 in terms of customer experience. #mancrush
Hi Troy, Andy and Todd… aw shucks. Thanks for the very nice comments. It’s really not me, it’s the whole team at WineBid. We’re 35 hard working people from the consignment execs to the inspections, photography and warehouse team, to customer service and developers and marketers. Just a few people in each department- but everyone is passionate about vintage wine and providing great customer service and experiences to consignors and to buyers. My job is just to get out of their way and help them do their best to serve you all!
And to Troy’s questions- Andy is absolutely correct and you are not alone! Most consignors check their sales a lot in the first week, and then slow down a lot after that. There is typical good up front interest, moderate activity through the week and then a flurry of activity at the end of each week. All Andy’s comments and experience is fairly typical.
Have a great holiday weekend!
I always wait to the last 30 seconds to place a bid. If you bid early someone else bids up your price you want to pay for your item. It gives others less time to come back in and place a higher bid if you bid above their high bid number. I always wonder why so many people bid the price of an item up for the week it is out for bid. That strategy is not good for the buyer, but great for the seller.
Russ is a stud. And WineBid is not his only company. In my law business, I heavily use the services of his other company.
What are you selling? Any good champs?
Champs? No way! ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Selling some wines I bought before I knew what I really liked. Mostly big, extracted wines that we have no interest in drinking.
Some people just bid what they’d be happy to pay, and let the auto bidding functionality do their work for them.
Your strategy might make some more sense on auction sites which do not offer that auto bidding, like BringaTrailer for example. (an auction site for vintage cars)
I know winebid in the past has had the occasional scheduled weekend pickup dates, but that would be a nice feature to consistently offer a few times a year if their landlord permitted it. Maybe a Saturday morning pick up date in November and May so that quasi locals could reliably combine vineyards wknd jaunts with picking up auction winnings.
Ask him to reopen the Chicago warehouse.
There have been numerous discussions here on bidding strategy,there is no objectively better one size fits all plan. In my case I have way more wine than I need, and never have to have a bottle. but like deals. Say a wine I like has opening bid of $100, and estimate of $120=150. I’m a buyer at low estimate. If I bid early (1st bidder) with autobid of $120, then:
a) if no one else interested, I win at $100
b) if one or more other bidders interested at $100, I win at 100
c) if others interested at $110, I win at $110
d) if others interested at $120, I win at $120
e) if others interested at $130, I lose
if I wait to snipe, I lose at d & e. with scenarios b & c, I pay $10 more than otherwise
I bid this way 90% of the time, and normally placed the bid once I see the wine that interests me. I consider it a no-lose strategy, as if someone else gets the wine, they get it for a price I was not willing to pay. If it is a special bottle, like a 1986 Magdelaine that I just grabbed, sometimes I bid later and more aggressively.
I bid on occasion and usually only once. If I see something I want, I bid and let the chips fall. I don’t snipe and if overbid, so be it. The good thing is all the wines I have purchased on Winebid have been in good shape.
Hi everyone, great points. Even though it is not in WineBid’s best interest, I can tell you that Jeff, RobertA and Robert Creth all have the best and most sophisticated bidding strategies. Bid on what you’re interested in, set your max bid that you’re willing to pay and be happy with, and then don’t look til the auction’s over. That way you don’t risk losing something you want but you also don’t risk overpaying or chasing a bottle. Even though we appreciate bidding wars, you all have the right strategy and attitude. Larry and Arv- I will ping you privately, but the short answers are: Larry- they shut down Chicago before I was brought into the company, due to the fact it was losing too much money for us, and was unsustainable. We’re looking at new ways to provide better drop off/pick up and shipping costs for next year but unfortunately no answers yet. Arv- we’re looking at doing more regular Saturday pickup oppty next year, thanks for the suggestion, that one is easier to make happen. Happy bidding, tasting and sharing everyone!
Good evening Troy,
Lots of good advice so far. Between my own occasional cellar thinnings and a large number of clients I have referred to winebid who ask me to monitor their own auctions, I think it is safe to say I have been an active observer of winebid activity for about 75% of the time since 2003. On that basis a few thoughts- numbered to match your questions- but first a general observation,
Winebid has always, in my opinion, been an outstanding venue in which to sell wine. They have had their ups and downs like all the other major venues in adapting to both the good and the bad side of wine becoming a readily tradable commodity, but overall I have never been disappointed. Once upon a time there were certain things that tended to do very well there. Now, in a time when the major (in a traditional sense- in terms of business I think we can safely call winebid a major house now) houses have overall much higher dollar lots on average, winebid is a great place to sell anything from a $25 Cab to Romanee Conti itself because there are a lot of buyers who only want 1-2 of something, and winebid offers a flexibility there that its competitors do not. Namely to bid on as many bottles as you like. In the last 2-3 years, winebid has gone from being a really solid operation with sweet spots to being a truly first class one stop shop to sell anything and everything.
Yes- very normal. It may seem obsessive but over time it can actually be instructive to watch the patterns for a variety of reasons.
I have only once had almost everything sell the first time- in that particular instance it was a client who was selling a lot of cherries and all but one lot sold the first week. And how much sells the first week depends on a number of factors. If you have at least 30 lots for sale of a good mix of well-known and generally popular items, it is not unreasonable to anticipate 30-60% sales in the first week.
Then there can be a bit of a lull as the game of chicken sets in. This is where the tracker feature gets fun. As unsold wines drop in minimum bid with the passing weeks, if your tracker count goes up- then often you get a nice surprise at some future date. This happened not long ago with a very obscure wine a client was selling in quantity. It started off at price X, and as it dropped to about half that over the course of several weeks the number of trackers grew to double digits. Then finally one Sunday night one of those people put in a bid for most of the bottles and suddenly others jumped in as well. In the end the bottles sold for where they had been sitting 3 weeks prior. Simply put, everyone tracking was waiting for an absurd bargain- but once the bidding started, a feeding frenzy ensued and the client got a nice return. So do not despair if some things sit for a while.
Also, even though my general observation suggests that there is less overlap in winebid vs Acker/Christies/Zachys live auctions these days, the fact is that when a bunch of live auctions are coming up- winebid can slow down a bit as some bidders wait to see how they do at live sales where there is only one chance to buy or not. It is less of a phenomenon than it used to be, but still observable if you are selling things similar to what is going into the big live auctions in any given week.
BTW- it is a good thing that not everything sells right away. That means the pricing is competitive but not bargain basement. Not everyone has time to monitor auctions every week, and even some of the best bottles in the world only have a few buyers. If everything disappears in the first week, either you have offered for sale a portfolio of all the hottest cherries on the market or the wines were priced lower than you could have achieved on average in your lots taking several weeks to sell through.
Trackers bid when they bid. The only real pattern I have noticed is what I said above- when you get a lot of trackers sitting on something, they are waiting for a lower price and often when someone finally bids, that desire to win from weeks of waiting can kick in and get a nice bidding war going.
I have never had anything not sell at all. Once something gets down below $20 it becomes a nice case stuffer. I am one of those kind of bidders when I go to auction, and also when I used to buy retail out of state before Texas got closed down for interstate shipping. If I am bidding on/buying 9-10 bottles, for example, right at the end I will go looking for 2-3 lower priced items to fill out a case. The shipping will be about the same either way- so why not fill up a box? I know for a fact I am not alone in thinking like that.
Best of luck!
Tom.
I had stopped checking out the winebid site on a weekly basis some years back when they raised the buyer’s premium to 17%.
Living in Seattle, the premium plus over 10% sales tax plus shipping added about a third to any winning bid, and with that the prices seemed higher than retail prices elsewhere…assuming the wines could be found at retail elsewhere, that is.
With a lower buyer’s premium, I would be a more frequent buyer.
That being said, I bought a couple of bottles there last week, so who knows?
Thanks for the great feedback, Tom. Really good stuff.
The “game of chicken” comment really hit home. Funny thing about the game is that people can actually lose in another way; the prices can actually GO UP in subsequent weeks. This happened on at least two of my lots that did not sell the first week. Seems someone else was selling larger lots than the onesie-twosie lots I’m selling and paid a premium at the end of the week, which caused the price on the bottles in my auction that did not sell to go up this week.
I had about 25% of my bottles sell the first week. Looking like maybe 10-20% will sell this week. Overall, I’m feeling good about how things are progressing, especially since these are wines I no longer wanted to drink, so they were literally worth nothing to me.
Thanks, everyone!
Hopefully that would include drop offs for selling as well 
I think their estimates of value are spot on. My wines have always sold close to opening prices they suggested and usually within 3 auctions. For that reason bargains are rare when you’re a buyer. Though their prices for hard to find bottles are likely to be lower than retail, even with the premium.
Nothing wrong with your sniping strategy at all.
I’ve placed early bids before on wines that seemed reasonably priced vs market value and WS Pro, for two reasons.
First, at say $5-20 more, the wine is no longer a buy to me and if like-minded trackers/bidders/snipers agree that the wine isn’t worth more than initial offer, then I’ll win it. I have 0.0 data to back this up, but I’d say it works just over half of the time. Also, to be clear, these are typically bids on under the radar wines or personal favorites that are under $50 - we’re not talking Rousseau or Gibourg here or any sort of board darling. For those, if I were in the market, I’d snipe.
Second, when I bid early I’m pretty good about standing firm regarding rebidding should someone decide my find was worth more $. But only if I place my bid early. Due to human nature if I snipe or bid late, and then someone comes in 30 seconds later with a higher bid, I’ll bid again.