Motor-tongued auctioneers and the eBay-driven online auction are old and new industry counterparts steaming along on a collision course.
But rather than meet in a train wreck, both sides would like to gently couple cars.
"They need us and we need them," said John Roebuck, president of the National Association of Auctioneers.
"They need to offer our members a way to compete in the online market. And, instead of sticking our head in the sand and pretending it's not existing, we need to embrace it."
The National Association of Auctioneers is in the process of deciding which of the two major players in the online auction world it will endorse, eBay or Amazon.com. The backing is seen as a way to thrust the NAA and its 6,000 members into the Internet age.
"Buyers and sellers still have not embraced the change in technology," Roebuck said. "Many of them think [online auctions are] a fad and think it will go away. I'm here to tell you it will not go away."
There is a large pipeline to tap into, said Steve Weinstein, financial analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. "A lot of these auction houses have relationships with people with large collections and professional dealers. And if you want to move into the high-end auction space, you want to those relationships."
Online auctions run up to several million transaction opportunities each year -- "several million items that can potentially be sold through the auctioneers," Roebuck said. Online transaction totals are still way behind those of traditional auctions, he said.
Ebay reports over 5.6 million registered eBay users with 2.5 million items listed in 1,600 categories. The NAA said annual totals for the offline auction business aren't available. And Amazon doesn't break out its auction business from its other e-commerce totals.
But Amazon does tout itself as the Web leader in electronic retail for books, CDs, and videos. It offers more than 4.7 million books, music-CD, video, DVD, and computer-game titles for sale. It hopes it can drive that existing and new commerce traffic into its fledgling auction business.
"Most auction houses have a very clear understanding that the Internet is going to affect their business, and eBay is the best example of that," said Kevin Pursglove, eBay's senior director of communications. "The traditional auction houses are aware of the fact that the Internet is going to have to become a key place for their future success."
One thing the NAA wants to determine from visits this month to Amazon and eBay is which online auctioneer is most technically capable of delivering live bidding.
Amazon thinks it has a big head start in the live online arena. Its LiveBid.com service, gained in an acquisition announced in April, "is numerous steps ahead of where anything else in the industry is right now," said Matt Williams, founder of LiveBid and now director of live auctions for Amazon.
Amazon.com moved further into the offline auction world in June, when it invested US$45 million in the venerable auction house, Sotheby's. In April, eBay acquired the smaller San Francisco auction house Butterfield & Butterfield for $260 million in stock.
EBay has yet to launch a live-bidding system yet, although it has one in the works. That's why the company emphasizes its numerical advantage over its distant competitor Amazon in the online auction race.
"Seven million dollars in gross merchandise sales every single day -- That's the total price of goods bought and sold between eBay users," said eBay's Pursglove.
Its competitors' daily figures are a tiny fraction of that, he said. "If you're an auctioneer, where are you going to go?"
Said Roebuck, "Both eBay and Amazon have great programs, but the main thing is that we get fulfillment of what the NAA needs."
Being able to deliver bids without technical difficulties is key. Amazon's LiveBid can manage users' pre-selected maximum bids, taking that figure ahead of time and then automatically seek to achieve the lowest figure below that number.
But Roebuck's years of experience in real-world auctions have convinced him that live bidding must be virtually the same for Internet users and bidders present on the auction floor.
"So many people don't like to show their full hand. And I probably wouldn't either... I like to click my bid in as it goes," he said. And that's not the only thing needed to bring the old-time auction community happily into the electronic fold.
"I don't think the integrity and trust and comfort level is there yet," Roebuck said.
