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Griff: Eric, let’s start off with the Elvis house. Tell us a little bit about the auction and how did you land the gig?
Eric: Well thanks Griff. It’s kind of an interesting story. The gentleman who is selling this house is selling for his friends who actually own it and they weren’t sure how to do eBay and he himself had done quite a bit of eBay, but just something of this magnitude he realized needed some special attention. So he got in touch with eBay and they and I have worked together on things like this in the past and they suggested he give me a call. And it’s really an overwhelming auction so far. I think we have over 7,000 watchers on it and about 130,000 unique visitors just in about one week’s time now.
Griff: So this is probably something that’s going to sell.
Eric: Yeah, the reserve was passed a couple days ago.
Griff: Oh great.
Eric: We actually got a call from Uri Geller, the gentleman who bends spoons who actually placed a bid on it and then issued a press release telling the world he’s going to be buying it.
Griff: Well he thinks he’s going to be buying it (laughter).
Eric: That’s true. Maybe he has some of those powers that tell him that, I don’t know.
Griff: Spoon bender, don’t get me started. Well it’s good, I mean, that’s been a lot of activity so that’s going to be one successful listing. What is the Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster auction about?
Eric: This is one we’re really, really excited about. I met Garry Kasparov last year in New York and he had thought about really promoting chess in schools through his foundation, the Kasparov Chess Foundation, and we developed a whole program by which he could really allow chess fans from around the world to bid and actually play him in a 25-person simultaneous match at the New York Athletic Club. It’s just an incredible opportunity. This is like a basketball fan getting to play basketball with Michael Jordan.
Griff: Wow, that’s terrific. When does that happen?
Eric: It’s actually just launched a couple days ago. It’s at eBay.com/chess. It goes right to the page and we have some bidder qualifications to make sure folks are serious about it, but it’s a whole evening of entertainment and meeting Garry. We’re not sure how many people are going to be able to beat him, but certainly they’ll have the opportunity.
Griff: Now what are the qualifications?
Eric: Now we make sure that folks obviously are serious about it, being able to pay for the bid and serious about following through, but the actual chess qualifications are that you cannot have a chess ranking which is called ELO, it’s one of their federations, of 2,000 or higher or about 2,200 from the U.S. Chess Federation. And that’s something they do check out to make sure there’s not going to be too many grandmasters coming to take on Garry.
Griff: But that could make it very interesting, though, couldn’t it?
Eric: You know, I think there are going to be quite a few high ranking players come and we’ve already gotten emails from a few fans from as far away as Indonesia who are planning to bid and fly in for the event.
Griff: Wow, this is really big news. So again, if you’re interested in chess at all or interested in seeing how the bidding goes on this particular item, check it out at www.eBay.com/chess. And of course the Elvis house you can view directly at www.eBay.com/Elvishouse1956. What is your website, Eric?
Eric: Our website is AuctionCause.com.
Griff: Now how are high value auctions different than regular eBay listings? Why do they need special attention?
Eric: We’ve found over the years that some of the high value auctions get people excited and passionate and instant ability to bid on auctions is one of the wonderful things about eBay, but sometimes folks could get carried away and maybe one spouse doesn’t check with another before placing a $100,000 bid on something. So what we normally do is disable the instant bidding ability and they have to contact us to get preapproved and it allows us to really verify that they are in fact serious. It’s almost like a cooling off period per se that you can’t bid instantaneously and we can verify financial ability to pay, their seriousness, their bidding history on eBay, and a few other things that just kind of keep it safe. We’ve also found when things are in the news people just want to see their names at the top of something really exciting like this. So it’s just really helpful, particularly if there are nonprofits involved. It really helps keep it safe for the community and everyone involved.
Griff: Now I should point out that this feature Eric is talking about is a feature available to any eBay seller. It’s called preapprove or block bidders and if you’ve never heard of it before you can access it through eBay help and then typing in preapprove or block bidder or searching the A to Z index, which I love to do, for block bidder or preapprove. And you can also find it if you go to My eBay and click on the All Selling link on the left-hand side and then scroll down and under the last box on the left-hand side of the page will be something called Selling Related Links. If you go down to the bottom of the links and click More it will expand into a full page of selling related links and one of them is for preapprove or block bidders and you can add any item by item number to that list. Now how is the Auction Cause company that you run like an ad agency and also an eBay seller at the same time?
Eric: Right. What we’ve tried to really create here, and it’s been pretty successful, is to take, for example, the design quality graphics of an ad agency and kind of convert that into very specific templates and designs. We’ve got some amazing designers on staff who just really try to make this more like a piece of art or a full page magazine ad. And then we try to do that along with the eBay experience. I’ve been a PowerSeller for over eight years and certainly like a lot of PowerSellers you just kind of, through experience after doing thousands of auctions, really recognize how to really strategize your time and the price and other elements of it just to really make it stand out and get bids. And we really try to tie that all in together with really good PR and account management. One tip we have for a lot of sellers who do big auctions is don’t be afraid to issue a press release over the wires. It really, really helps bring some fresh attention to your auction. You know, the folks on eBay are probably going to find it, but the people who’ve never been there really need a helping hand sometimes over to the eBay site.
Griff: Yeah, and that’s something that you do. And Lee, we’ve actually talked on the show in the past about how to do press releases as well.
Lee: Oh yeah.
Griff: It’s very important. And of course, if you’re dealing with a company like Eric’s, Auction Cause, they can actually do all this work for you as part of the contract. What other famous listings have you managed on eBay?
Eric: A few that we seem to get a lot of calls or people seem to remember are we did the famous Robby Gordon racecar helmet where he got mad at another driver last year and he tossed it at someone and they tried to turn that into a really positive experience by giving the money to charity.
Griff: Yes, I remember that.
Eric: And it did very, very well and got a lot of publicity. One of my all time favorites was the Stephen King auction where a small nonprofit called First Amendment Project out of Oakland, California came to us with eighteen very famous writers such as Stephen King, John Grisham, and a few others who were willing to donate the name of a character in their next book.
Griff: Oh yeah, that was a big hit. I remember that one.
Lee: Do you do any of the Jesus on toast stuff?
Eric: You know, we don’t. Those seem to be just kind of cult followings and those amazing things we all hear about.
Griff: Just as well you don’t. There’s enough of that on the site. Eric, thanks so much for joining us.
Eric: Thank you guys.
Griff: You can visit Eric’s site at AuctionCause.com and you can check out all their eBay listings that are currently up including the Elvis house. This segment has been brought to you by Skype at www.talkonyourcomputer.com. Up next, we’ll discuss even more when we continue with eBay Radio.
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