EMG Cheltenham

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emgcr
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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by emgcr »

It sold for such a ridiculously low price that one wonders if the auction house had their act together regarding the bidding technology and if all potential bidders were actually able to bid ? Had such a "give-away" price been even vaguely anticipated I think there would have been many more bidders---this writer included ! The bargain of the century.

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Re: EMG Cheltenham

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Orchorsol wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:43 am Somebody got a thundering bargain - £2700 hammer price, £3573 including commission and VAT. I wish I'd bid myself now!
I am literally flabbergasted. I have to sit down.

I wish I had bid my-self. I am absolutely astonished. Cheap isn't the word. :(

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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by poodling around »

emgcr wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:56 am It sold for such a ridiculously low price that one wonders if the auction house had their act together regarding the bidding technology and if all potential bidders were actually able to bid ? Had such a "give-away" price been even vaguely anticipated I think there would have been many more bidders---this writer included ! The bargain of the century.
Oddly enough there was an internet problem effecting .gov, ebay etc. earlier today.

Something to do with 'the cloud' - what-ever that is. Maybe hackers ?

So maybe some internet bidders were unable to bid ?

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Steve
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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by Steve »

Count me as another flabbergasted onlooker. Had I known it was likely to fall well below £5-7000, I would have bid on it as well to competently sell on in the near future. Like Graham I already own a fantastic condition example of this very model. My example and IIRC Graham's too are both better than the one at Cheltenham but there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

It is truly astonishing. I do think they might have reserved it though?

PS - No, they didn't. Let me add it to my list of 101 examples of British auctioneers' incompetence. I feel a book coming on!

I've just received a Decca 130 I won at auction. For some bizarre reason they left the winding handle in the winding hole instead of removing it and stowing it away where it's designed to go in transit.

It was packed by Mailbox this way and arrived with a broken wooden grip where the package has been dropped. Nevermind, I've managed to repair it now but it does beggar belief sometimes!

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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by epigramophone »

As Graham implies, there is more to this than simple incompetence.

During the pandemic, the terms and conditions imposed by some auction houses have been almost wilfully difficult, as I discovered when contemplating the purchase of an Edison Opera almost 200 miles from my home. I reluctantly decided that it was just not worth the hassle, and was not surprised when it sold for well below the going rate.

Until auctioneers stop treating potential bidders as a nuisance, we can expect to see more poor sales results.

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Steve
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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by Steve »

I understand your point, Roger, that difficult auction conditions and terms will usually translate into low prices achieved but with something as uncommon as an EMG or Expert I'd expect people to be jumping through hoops of fire to get them.

Also, we very recently saw a world record price for an EMG achieved. Was that simply down to an accommodating auctioneer?

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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by CarlosV »

Steve wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:50 am
Also, we very recently saw a world record price for an EMG achieved. Was that simply down to an accommodating auctioneer?
My guess is that the high price of that EMG some weeks ago scared away the potential buyers of this one. After this latest bargain, all will feel empowered and hopeful to bid on the next one that shows up for sale, and maybe end up reaching new record highs.

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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by Orchorsol »

The more I see this discussed between various friends, the more it seems that a large-scale internet problem was highly significant.
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Re: EMG Cheltenham

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In my opinion there is more evidence of an internet failure to be found when considering the rapidity at which lots were completed. I looked in on the auction at various times that day and estimated when 283 would come up but was very surprised when it arrived much more quickly than I had calculated. This I saw was due to the great number of "passed" lot sales---ie unsold items, again pointing to the inability of bids to "get through". Additionally, a good friend in America mentioned that "It was on the news that there was a major internet pipeline failure!"

The auctioneers should not have been ignorant about EMG/Experts as a friend and I both bought from the same house within the last five years at substantially higher prices.

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Re: EMG Cheltenham

Post by emgcr »

As perhaps a final note on this sale, I had a message from a good friend who runs a top internet solutions company---Jarrett and Lam https://www.jarrettandlam.com/ who tells us the following :

"I believe on the day of the auction a big internet load balancing service called Fastly happened to have an outage due to a highly obscure bug in one of its configurations. The outage only lasted about an hour or two, but it was clearly enough to keep the majority of the competition at bay. It effectively made some parts of the internet unavailable to some people for a short period, but the chances of all the stars aligning as they did were tiny! If ever serendipity was at work, it was clearly then!"

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