Adding Auctions? [683]

Just thought of this today and I’m not even sure if it’d work but it sounded cool to me at least. Why not have a auction setting for some snakes? For example, a female hatchling clown ranges from 400 to 600 for the most part so if a seller wanted to auction something it would be dependent on how much that morph goes for from high to low end. There would be a starting bid and the seller could choose how long the auction would be. Dont know what you guys think about it but I just thought itd be cool to share.

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Speaking as a breeder here I would prefer for MM to remain a retail platform, which means stable prices, which in turn keep the market strong for EVERYONE.

Once you have an auction platform people expect those auction prices on animals sold retail and it does not benefit breeders in the least.

After that on the practical end of it who will monitor those auctions, making sure there is no cheating (seller having his buddies bid), making sure the winner is not just playing around but actually paying.

Food for the thoughts.

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All good points and now that I think about it, it does seem like a very far fetched idea.

A guy I follow will do auction type sales with his YouTube/Patreon followers each month it’s nice but I agree for the platform as a whole I think it’s good the way it is.

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Bob Clark and Freedom Breeder do auctions on Facebook still, but I don’t know how well that would work on MorphMarket. It’s not interactive in the same way Facebook is. The ads on MM are more static than live and it would probably take a lot of effort to add the features you’d need for an auction. If anything, I think having a separate section for auctions might work, but that would also take a lot of coding.

We do get this request not too infrequently, but it’s a very controversial topic.

Auctions done poorly can result in fire sale prices, which breeders believe lowers the expected market value of those items. I’m not sure if this has been demonstrated scientifically or it’s just a fear but it’s very prevalent among breeders.

My personal opinion is that the main problem with auctions is when they are conducted with a small audience, which results in extra low prices. The reason I think MorphMarket would be uniquely suited to offering auctions is because we have a large audience of buyers every day.

In any case, we do not have any near term plans of adding an auction.

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Personally: I believe Auctions have been the biggest mistake in the hobby.

Nothing wrong with one off (special occasions) like the Chaise Patton Auctions as an example. Other than that people use auctions to make a killing, or dump their animals onto the market they can’t seem to sell otherwise.

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Biggest mistake?

Lol no way. There are idiots out there topping that without breaking a sweat :joy: but agree special occasions makes more sense than just constant or always on a platform like MM. I like how the market operates now.

That can only mean one thing:

You’re not in Europe.
Come round here, and I’ll show you utter chaos and freefall. :wink::v:

I agree with Martin! Please don’t add auctions.

No thanks :joy::joy:

Reptile Ring was an auction site run by a very large breeder with 90K followers and it failed miserably. Auctions are a horrible platform to sell your animals.

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I feel like it was the term of having to win like 10 auctions in order to post auctions that was a real killer for it. Then MM came along and dropped the hammer on it.

Reptilering was damn close to a pyramid scheme, don’t even begin to use that as an example for anything. Auctions can be a great way to get real market value for an animal, I mean seriously, it gets you a little higher than the 2nd highest price someone was willing to pay for that animal. As long as everyone willing to pay for that animal had access to the platform. Just ask the car hobby or horse hobby. Reptile hobby has been doing auctions all wrong. It’s not supposed to be a way to off load your unwanted animals. Wanna fetch premium price for your premium car? Barrett Jackson. Hey can I buy that horse, no I can’t because its going to auction, where the fact it went to auction makes the price sky rocket for more than I would ever buy it straight up most likely.

On top of not putting the right animals for auction, our hobby severely fragmented the auctions over tons of facebook pages and other platforms. Sure morphmarket could mostly fix that issue, given its reach, it doesn’t fix what the hobby has already established, thus given the bitter attitude toward the word auction in our hobby now. I disagree with auctions being a problem for prices, we’ve been wholesaling since before I was born. That should be doing far more damage than auctions and obviously it doesn’t. Retail prices drop because sellers drop their retail price or overvalue their animals. Its either don’t be weak or be realistic. As a seller thats something you battle all the time, some do it better than others.

Anyone remember ballbids? lmao

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Yeah after reading all these reptiles I realized my suggestion wasnt that great but as much as I want to delete my post I wont because I think it serves a purpose to others by showing that something not well organized can turn out bad. I also think the discussion amongst everyone shows a purpose and proves a good point as well.

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I’ll use one myself someday if I have a big enough following for a charity snake or 2 a year but other than that yeah this is better for sure :stuck_out_tongue:

It would be so nice to have a bidding feature that starts out at a minimum price then you could bid or buy it now for full asking price.

Also frilled dragon category in other lizards they are cool :slight_smile:

The thought of having to advertise an animal at two prices is terrible. Among other things, I pay for a MM subscription because of the positive effect it has on price stability.

If you want to buy a specific animal but feel like the price tag is $25 too high, the search tools are robust enough for you to plug in that criteria and see if the market agrees with you.

We breeders are selling the beloved fruits of our labor. We are not here to sell a Nintendo Switch at some absurd markup out of greed.

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Personally, as a buyer, I am not a fan of auctions, but I can understand why others might like them. I would much rather take my time looking through available snakes and seeing what the price is and if I like the snake and think the price is fair, then being able to buy it without the pressure of competing against other buyers for the best deal. I remember when eBay added the Buy it Now feature so many years ago and it was actually a relief for me!

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Was wondering if there was a way to make a auction section for ppl that would like to auction their animals off they can set a starting asking price and let auction run for maybe 5 days and highest bidder wins