Stephen Levy: Well, well, stuff like that. No one understand ads, right? But I think it's great to explain it. People, people are fascinated because here's a system. You run these auctions . You're the biggest auctioneer in the world, but the highest bidder isn't necessarily the winning bid, right? And the -- yeah, somehow a big factor in the bid is how good an ad is. How's that work? Right? But that's a way to explain how ads fit in into the whole Google world there. And a lot of people, I guess they just don't get the
Barcelona at a prestigious sounding place so internships have become a kind of commodity now strangely uh there are internship auctions the the most absurd of these was a $42,500 paid for a week-long internship with Anna winter at Vogue uh so these things are offered up at you know sort of society events uh at
So it's really magical to see them do these short films and a subject matter like suicide, and bullying, and really deep subjects And they have auctions and things like that.
I was our only coffee buyer. of excellence auctions , where they started rewarding farmers based on cup quality blind, and having auctions for their coffee.
They could buy it for 30 or 40 cents on the dollar for what it just went to auction for. These are the country auctions and the yard sales of the investment world.
But I think the first one was when I was in LA, like shopping for vintage and visiting friends, drinking canned beer in someones backyard, and my auctions were closing, which is just so cool. You get all these e-mails and the auctions go crazy at the last minute, because people think they're going to like sneak in and get a great deal,
So, I think it was probably 2007-- I mean it was only on eBay for like a year and a half-- that my auctions were closing and it was one week's worth of auctions and it was like $2,500 of stuff, which I probably paid like, who knows in total, $100 for. Who knows what my total cost was.
So the idea that people weren't calling it Monopoly, I mean, this comes up in the depositions. before the auctions were added.
demons and other figures in them. and London auctions , in all likelihood 50%, maybe 75%, is
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to We always had auctions .
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to But the online auctions have really helped us put things that we're not sure about on a bigger market that we can get
channels are seriously constrained. Russia has had several failed auctions now uh to sell government debt to to Russian banks and as a result canled auctions then uh thereafter. This is generally not something that happens to
Russia has had several failed auctions now uh to sell government debt to to Russian banks and as a result canled auctions then uh thereafter. This is generally not something that happens to great powers during a war. And of course uh the the sovereign wealth fund is increasingly depleted. So the financing
Welcome to the auction, sir, and be sure to find me afterwards. You're coming to all my auctions moving forward. I have $10,000 here.
People's perception of what you are worth is sometimes so much higher than what you think it is. When I first started taking auctions , anytime I would get on stage, in the manual, alongside lot number one, it would have a number for what someone thought something would go for. And interestingly, every single time, the lot would end up right around that number.
Thank you very much for that, and those of you who are not on your phones, also. But I would go into those auctions , and it just felt like nobody was paying attention. They were drinking. They were all talking to each other.
And interior designers seem to like them. I either saw them at art auctions for charity, or this one's going into somebody's home, I believe. Do you have challenges at TSA if you go get on a flight right after you've done black powder art work?
But I limit it to a less than 15% of that 68%. There's the fresh and the frozen auctions .
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to We did it as paper auctions .
So I'm going to spend the next half hour with you giving you tricks of the trade, things that I've learned after 16 years of being on stage 70 to 100 nights a year, taking auctions to benefit nonprofits. So I thought, because how many of you have been to an auction before in this room?
and we implement the one that people are willing in total to pay the most for. And all the money that's raised by these auctions is continually returned to all the citizens of Marketopia in equal shares, as a social dividend, or you might call it a universal basic income.
And I opened the book with a story about my in-laws, who used to spend-- they had a house in Connecticut, and they used to spend the weekends going to yard sales and country auctions looking for bargains, OK? Paintings or sculptures-- they were art collectors.
And I described what they were actually doing. And they were not going to these yard sales and country auctions looking for-- seeing a painting that was discarded, saying, this guy's the next Picasso. That's not what they were doing.
and my auctions were closing, which is just so cool. You get all these e-mails and the auctions go crazy at the last minute, because people think they're going to like sneak in and get a great deal, but they actually just drive prices up because all it takes is two people that are willing to spend $100 more.
It must be in the literature somewhere. And I looked through all the literature I could find on auctions and so on. And a year or two later, I discovered actually the basics were in your book, the Roth and Sotomayor book, which was a kind of compendium,
Warren Buffett says he doesn't participate in open outcry auctions .
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to How long ago did Housing Works implement the auctions that they have storefronts?
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to And also, the auctions were a great way to sort of be a check on that we're getting the right price.
And all of a sudden, I heard a couple of laughs. I feel like you are also going to be at all of my auctions moving forward-- a man who says yes to everything.
we see now that the banks have serious issues with liquidity. Uh and they're no longer willing to buy government debt to the extent that they did before. This is what is behind the the canceled or failed auctions . And one of the key issues that banks have with liquidity is in fact that uh people are withdrawing
And people with money at stake-- people with investment capital at risk-- do I have to pay attention to German bund auctions ?
doors of industrial factory farms, hatcheries, livestock auctions , when the industry doesn't think that it is being watched.
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to So we decided to put them online, and we did online auctions .
straight away after that-- having seen four months of QXL, seeing that online auctions were working, seeing e-commerce was working, thinking I knew a lot more
In fact fear of loss if you look at let's say, bidding behavior at auctions . People will overbid dramatically more to prevent losing, let's say, $10 as opposed to gaining
to financial performance. Indeed, in 2007, when Vodafone launched m-pesa, well, at the time, its main strategic priority was spectrum auctions .
in a well-lit sale room. And so the first five years, after I passed the class, I had taken so many auctions , because I was so young, and I had nothing else to do.
And in the same way, whilst Sky has always been the incumbent for live Premier League matches, BT came into the market two auctions ago,
I was our only coffee buyer. The auction systems that in the coffee world, the niche insider world, started for the best of Panama auctions , these cup
How can we take advantage of those people who have to sell, those people who are going into the auctions .
And you're like, whoa like it went up $100 in the last three seconds. So, I think it was probably 2007-- I mean it was only on eBay for like a year and a half-- that my auctions were closing and it was one week's worth of auctions and it was like $2,500 of stuff, which I probably paid like, who knows in total, $100
But whenever I've gotten my hands on movie props or souvenirs, I have friends who do charity auctions for different charities I'm involved in
But we don't know it until someone puts a frame around it, a didactic panel, and auctions it off.
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to And then it sort of caught fire, and we were able to go, we ended up going online through our auctions , and
So if we start out with a good product and actually have the donations that are high-end, you're going to be able to And we have shophousingworks.com, which does about $1 and 1/2 million a year through our auctions .