Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
I would also extend the above questions to Chris Cavalier and GUU Auctions. I will add them to the grid.
Hello Eric,

Thank you for extending the questions to GUU. Here are my replies:

Does your auction house list items in which you have a financial interest? (Either you own it, or have a stake in?)

If the answer is 'yes,' are these labeled in any way? (For Example "House Lot")

I have actually read some of the previous replies and the GUU policy is most analogous to REA auctions in this regard. In fact, I think Robert Lifson did a nice job identifying some of the existing problems in the industry that GUU also hopes to address. GUU will be as transparent as possible, something I believe we have already shown collectors. There will be no GUU “house account” where items can be sold by the auction house with the bidder thinking they are coming from an outside consignor.

As with REA, those involved in any capacity with GUU will have the ability to personally consign items. However, these items will be subject to evaluations other than that of the consignor and the identity of the consignor will be explicitly disclosed. Personally, I don’t think we should penalize those involved with GUU from consigning items to our auction if they believe in our model and business practices. However, the bidder will always know who the consignor is and the consignors will not be allowed to bid on their own items.

Do you allow your authenticator (one who's services you pay for) to consign items to your auction?

I believe this is covered in the second paragraph of the response to question #1 above. I also think the transparency and outside evaluation components mentioned above will be very evident when we launch of our first major auction in July.

Are members of your auction house allowed to bid on the items in your auction?

Given the stage our company is in, we may be set up slightly different than other existing houses. To be very clear, no one with access to bidding information will be allowed to bid in our auctions. Those peripherally involved with GUU may bid in the auction if: a) they do not have any financial interest whatsoever in the item being sold, and b) they do not have access to any bidding information that could give them an unfair advantage in the auction.

So that people understand our commitment to ethics, in the small pilot auction we conducted on the forum, 5 of the 11 items we sold in the game used section had ceiling bids that were not reached because there were no other bidders willing to bid higher amounts on those items. I think a few of the winning bidders even mentioned this fact in another thread. In addition, 4 of the 7 autographed baseballs also had ceiling bids that were not reached for the same reason. In fact, there was one ceiling bid that was over twice the amount of the opening bid for one of the baseballs and the winning bidder won the item for only the opening bid. I hope this, along with everything else we have done as a company, shows our commitment to putting the collector first and doing the right thing.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions about these responses.

Sincerely,
Christopher Cavalier
CEO – Game Used Universe