Rook's Comics and Games

Rook’s is having an auction! I got this idea from a retailer in California named Gary Ray. He runs a very cool store and he has had a lot of success with his auctions. We are going to have this auction on May 2nd, the day after Free Comic Book Day. This is a Sunday so we can take over the store and not have too many people mad at us.
The way the auction works is thus:

1. People bring in items they wish to auction. We will have a “buy it now” phase followed by the auction portion. If you would like to sell your item for a fixed price than you fill out our auction form and indicate the price at which you would like to sell your item. If you would like to auction your item then when you fill out the form you can indicate what the starting bid will be.
2. Somebody buys your item. The person who bought your item will pay you in store credit. Basically, the purchaser will give us cash or store credit and we will then put that same amount onto your account.

The auction is as simple as that. Of course there will be a few more rules involved but that is the general idea. I think the auction is a really cool idea for several reasons. One, it helps us out. All of the cash generated by the auction turns into store credit. This keeps the money in the store which is why it is worth our time and effort to set up. Second, it should help out everyone in the community. This type of auction is basically an exchange among customers. You are able to get rid of something you don’t want and acquire something you do want. We are allowing people to use store credit earned earlier in the day to purchase others auctions later in the day. This way it is totally feasible for somebody to essentially trade items with no money leaving their pocket. I see this auction as win-win. It keeps money in the store which, as an owner, I like but it also allows customers to trade off items for something more valuable for them.

Here are a few more details. We will begin taking items April 1st. This means that we are going to store items for people for as long as it is feasible for us to do so. If you give us your items to store, we won’t give them back until the day of the auction. It will be too much work for us to be digging into our storage every time somebody wants to do something with their item. If your item doesn’t sell, we will hold it for up to a week so that you may pick it up. After that, we will either give it away or trash it. We will accept items all the way up to Saturday, May 1st. May 1st is Free Comic Book Day allowing us to advertize to a huge amount of customers. If you are able to bring your items in before May 1st, then they will be displayed on Free Comic Book Day to build interest. We want to take any kind of hobby related item for any kind of price. However, I won’t let the auction get bogged down with a whole bunch of 1 dollar items, or things that don’t seem related to ur store in any way. If you do have a lot of small items, I may aggregate them into a lot or I might not auction them at all. In this case, I would highly recommend a “buy it now” type sale. That way we can display the items without bogging the auction down. Finally, I am going to be putting items we receive up on the website. I don’t exactly know the format but I am going to try and put a description and photo of the major items that we take in. This way people can see what will be up for auction and plan accordingly.

None of this information is totally finalized and may still change, but hopefully this will be the basic plan. If anybody has any comments, suggestions or questions about the auction and how it works, please stop in and talk with someone about it. Happy selling!