Tuesday, September 16, 2008

September has been a busy month for miniature lamp sales with two major auctions--one at Roan's in Williamsport, PA on September 4th and 5th and one at Green Valley in Mt. Crawford, VA this past Saturday, September 13th.  The data for most of the listed miniature lamps offered at these two auctions have now been entered into the Bidstracker database.  We record this data in real time at the auction as the bidding on each item is completed.  We do occasionally miss the final bid amount on a few items (no more than 3 or 4 in each auction), so that a couple of items may be missing from the database.  Also, remember that we only track lots that have either a single lamp or two or more identical lamps in them.  We don't track mixed lots because it is impossible to know how much of the amount bid was intended for each item in the lot.  Still these two auctions added data on 419 items to the database.

Monday, July 28, 2008

We have entered data from Saturday's auction at Dotta Auctions in Nazareth, Pa.  The data are for only 25 lots from this auction, mostly skater's lamps with colored glass globes.  However, we found this auction interesting because all of the lots were initially listed on eBay Live Auctions, but, disappeared from eBay just a few days before the auction.  We asked about this at the auction house.  They were quite unhappy with eBay.  Apparently, because of poor feedback (which according to the auctioneer came from a single dissatisfied buyer), their account was suspended for 30 days and all of their items were removed from eBay.  They claimed that they could not reach anyone at eBay to attempt to resolve the problem or to restore their account.  As a result, they said they were through using eBay.  [eBay announced in April of this year that they would be discontinuing support for Live Auctions at the end of 2008.  This has led to continued rumors that eBay is attempting to abandon the auction format listings altogether.  According to eBay's April announcement, that is not true; eBay has no plans to discontinue auction format listings which has been the most central aspect of their business.]  In any case, because the lamps from the Dotta Auction appeared on eBay long enough for many collectors to see them and then disappeared, we thought bidstracker users would be interested to know that the results from this auction have been incorporated into the database.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

We have now entered some data from two recent auctions.  First, an auction of a large number of miniature lamps was held in Cedar Falls, Iowa at Jackson Auctions on March 25.  Most of the lots in that auction consisted of groups of similar but not identical lamps.  Only a few lots consisted of single, identifiable lamps and those are the only lots that have been entered into the database.  It is really not possible to figure out or infer the selling price of individual lamps in a multi-lamp lot and that is why we don't track those.  Second, we have entered the date from the most recent (June 20) Julia auction.  While there were quite a few single lamp lots in this auction (and that's the data that's been entered) there were also a large number of multi-lamp lots which we skipped.

Maintaining the Bidstracker database is a time-consuming effort.  We generally spend a couple of hours/day doing it.  In order to save time we have decided not to track the sale of a number of listed lamps.  We use three criteria in deciding not to track the sale of a particular lamp; First if a lamp is not particularly old or if it is not primarily a lamp used for lighting we will consider not tracking it.  Second, if we have a great deal of data about that "not old" or "not really a lamp" lamp, we will decide to no longer track it.  Once you have a lot of data, adding more does not necessarily change or otherwise improve the value estimate derived from the data (for example, if there is a lamp that we've seen 100 times and it has averaged a high bid of $100 and then one of these lamps sells for, say, 3 times the average or $300, adding that lamp to the data only changes the overall average to $102--not significantly different from the previous average.  And, of course, the likelihood of something that averages $100 across 100 examples of selling for three times the average is pretty low).  Third, generally speaking, the items we've stopped tracking have a relatively low average value.

Here's a list of the lamps we've stopped tracking and the reasons why:

S1-094: Tin lamp painted in various colors.  Dates from the 1930s/1940s.  354 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $12.

S1-119: Clear swirled glass perfume lamp.  Dates from the 1920s/1930s or later. 417 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $12.

S1-143: Lincoln Drape.  Dates from 1930s/1940s or later.  Was a perfume lamp.  435 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $30.

S1-286: Clear glass Cosmos.  Later reproduction of an authentic lamp marketed by Rubicon as a perfume lamp. 677 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $25.  Note that we still track the frosted clear glass, painted white glass, authentic old white milk glass and the pink and yellow cased glass versions.  We are considering dropping the frosted and painted glass versions but have not done so yet.  We will continue to track the white milk glass and the colored cased glass versions.

S1-630: Vapo-cresolene.  Dates from 1879-1930.  Not really a lamp.  Among the most common of all.  1399 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $35.

S2-014 and S2-015: Jeweler's or barber's singeing lamp.  Not really a lamp.  About 204 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $50, but have sold for as low as $5 and as high as $210.

S2-106: Jeweler's or barber's singeing lamp.  Not really a lamp. About 109 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $25.

S2-182: Hobnail perfume lamp.  Dates from 1940s/1950s.  544 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $12.

S2-183: Same as S1-119 but with swirled glass shade.

S2-184: Squat swirled perfume lamp with reflector or with metal finger handle.  Dates from 1940s/1950s.  412 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $14.

S2-185: Squat swirled or floral embossed perfume lamp. Dates from 1940s/1950s.  98 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $12.

So-191: Colored glass quilted lamps.  Known to be not old.  192 examples currently in the database.  Average high bid amount about $40.

There are a number of other lamps that we are considering dropping from further tracking, but have not yet done so.  We will post information here on any others we decide to drop when and if we do actually stop tracking them.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

We have incorporated into the database the results of two recent live auctions.  The first of these was the auction of about 60 listed miniature lamps at the annual Night Light Club convention the weekend of September 30 in Reading, PA.  The second was the auction of about 300 listed miniature lamps at Roan's in Williamsport, PA on Saturday, October 22.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

You may have noticed some new information appearing on the bidstracker details pages (if not, go ahead and take a look at one of those pages--after you've gotten to the summary page for any given Book/Figure Number combination, click on any of the line items which shows the summary for each variation by condition.  This gives you a listing of the raw data that went into that summary.  Now, about the bottom of that listing there will be two new tables.  These are what we've talking about).

As we collected the data for bidstracker and as we've bought and sold lamps on eBay, we began to wonder about a couple of things.  Among those were a) Does the starting bid amount make any difference in the percent of lamps sold or the high bid amount? and, b) has there been any trend of prices for a given lamp over time?

The two tables now appearing at the end of the details listing page are an attempt to address those two questions.  A note of caution before we describe these two tables in more detail.  The data in some of the cells can be quite sparse (frequently only 1 or 2 lamps, even for lamps which are very common).  Thus any conclusions should be drawn very carefully and taken with several grains of salt.  Nonetheless, it is our hope that the new information provided will be of some use and some help.

The first of the two tables shows the percentage of lamps sold and the average high bid amount as a function of starting bid amount for lamps with and without a reserve.  Starting bid amounts are grouped into $10 ranges (without such grouping there would practically never be enough data in any one cell to make any sense).  For each $10 range, we report first, for lamps without a reserve, the number offered in that starting price range, the per cent which actually sold and the average high bid amount (lamps which received no bids are not counted in this average).  Then we show the same data for lamps which started in that price range but which had a reserve.  The average high bid amount for lamps in a given price range which did have a reserve includes the high bid amount for lamps which did not meet the reserve, but does not include lamps which received no bids.

We think that this table may be useful to eBay sellers in helping them to set starting bid amounts and to decide on whether or not put a reserve on a lamp.  So far, however, in the few cases at which we looked, no clear cut decisions jumped out at us--only some suggestions of what to do.

The second table attempts to provide some insight into the trend of prices for a given lamp over time.  The best way to present this information would be as a scatter plot of high bid amounts by sale date.  However, we don't have appropriate graphing software which will work with the data base we use (Microsoft Access) and which is supported on our hosting service.  Thus, we've developed an expedient alternative.  We've arbitrarily split time into six month segments beginning with June of 2002 (when we first started collecting bidstracker data).  For each six month segment, we've calculated the average high bid amount for a given lamp/variation/condition.  Despite a subjective feeling that the prices for some lamps have been increasing, we have yet to find any evidence of that.  We think that there may be some cyclical effect in operation, but we haven't yet attempted to study that systematically.  The data is there if you wish to look at it and perhaps it may prove useful.

We still have some additional ideas of things we'd like to implement in bidstracker...but it will be a while before they can get properly defined and implemented.  We have not yet updated the help pages to describe these two new tables, but will leave this message up on the site until we do that.