Those wines are very difficult to sell at auction. I bet they grouped them to just get rid of them and not have several unsold lots to deal with. They are also very low value, they might have a minimum lot value that they aim for and they need to make that big of a lot of these types of wines to get to their minimum.
It does have real-time bidding on the auction days (HDH calls it “live bidding,” but I wanted to distinguish from the auctions where bidders are present in the room with the auctioneers). As I don’t show up in person, my interface isn’t any different from their normal auctions. I don’t know if they accept absentee bids or phone bids for these auctions like they do for normal auctions.
this kind of lot is exactly why they started doing the internet auctions. In the past, this would’ve gone to retail consignment and would’ve sat around for a loooooooonnnnnnggggggg time (which has also meant things I normally would love a bottle or two of at the old retail are now in multi-bottle lots).
I’m not seeing anything wrong with this lot at all and I would imagine for someone who is into Cali Pinot that this lot could be a nice little coup for them.
I don’t think I’ve ever done a live bid for the internet auctions. I always put my bids in ahead of time.
For feel, they have someone in house auctioning things off. But, there is no live audience for this unless you truly, deeply want to sit and watch Marc or Nick auction things off in an empty room
eBay seems to be about the only site which can accept online bids in real time [down to the granularity of about 5 seconds].
With all of the other sites, the software freezes when you try to enter a bid on a lot in real time, and my suspicion is that for most of those sites, the server is so badly over-loaded that what you [mistakenly] believe to be real-time information on your screen [concerning the lot in question] is actually fairly far into the distant past, and in reality, the auction has already long since moved on to the next lot.
I have to say I think one shows a lot of imagination and is fun. Take the point that 31 is an awkward number, but it is still really appealing to people who want to try a group of wines for relatively little money. A pair of large verticals or three smaller ones, a special at a wine bar, a month of dinners featuring a different Pinot Noir each night, a party etc.
Incorrect. Or I should say, it depends. I’m in Paris, and a large percentage of the wine for sale is from estates. Or from restaurants that have closed. Etc. Families inherit wine and don’t know what to do with it, so they sell. Then again, that is Paris. Other regions may differ. And I’m not talking Christie’s or Sotheby’s.
Seeing that list makes it clear that the first day of theoretical discussion here was silly. When you see the list, you know why they lumped them together.
Spot on. Minimum lot values for houses that conduct their auctions at restaurants are typically enforced because there’s a lot of pressure to clear the room in time for the staff to set up for dinner service, affecting the total daily lot count. Plus we’ve all seen how weak the last lots of a sale can be, when people leave the room to go do other things; wasting time on lots that will generate little interest does a disservice to other consignors in the sale with no corresponding benefit.
Grouping low value similar wines like this into one large lot instead of several will rarely affect the selling price–as Poppy notes, wines like this are very difficult to sell, and would be quite likely to go at reserve or pass regardless of the lot configuration. Oddly in my Zachys days we sometimes found that very large lots like this were sometimes easier to get bids on; my speculation was that it’s more appealing for a buyer who likes whatever type of wine is on offer just to buy one lot and be set for months than to bother with bidding on multiple lots.