Talking to your auctioneer: reserves, lot numbers, and sale day

Sellers and auctioneers mostly want the same thing and still manage to frustrate each other, because they're operating on different clocks. The seller is thinking about their equipment. The auctioneer is thinking about a hundred and fifty lots closing on a staggered timer.

Three conversations decide how it goes.

1. The reserve conversation — before the catalog closes

A reserve is not a wish. It's the number below which you'd genuinely rather keep the machine and deal with storing it, moving it, and selling it later.

Set it too high and you get the worst outcome in auctions: a lot that draws real bidding, stalls under reserve, and doesn't sell. You've now burned your best buyers' attention and you still own the machine. Set it thoughtfully and the auction does what it's good at — finding the actual market price fast.

Have this conversation before the catalog publishes, because after that your options narrow.

2. The lot number conversation — before anything gets marketed

Lot numbers seem like bookkeeping and they're not. They're the shared vocabulary for the rest of the sale. Once a lot is Lot 042, that's what it is in the catalog, on the collage image, in the buyer's question, on the invoice, and on your payout document.

Renumbering after marketing has gone out creates a category of confusion that costs real money — buyers bidding on the wrong item, freight quoted for the wrong machine.

3. The sale-day conversation — live, while it's happening

Here's what most sellers don't realize: on a timed online auction, lots close on a staggered schedule, often every couple of minutes. Your lot might close at 4:38 and the next at 4:40.

That creates a narrow, real window. If your machine is sitting at $4,000 against a $5,000 reserve with six minutes left, you have a decision to make. Do you hold and keep it, or lower the reserve and let it go at the market's number?

That decision has to reach the auctioneer *before* the lot closes, and "I'll call you" doesn't work when they're running a hundred lots.

One rule that protects everyone

Reserves move down during a sale, never up. A buyer who bids against a reserve and then watches it climb will never trust that auction house again — and they're right not to.

AuctionRoster enforces this in the software: a live reserve change is accepted only if it's lower than the current one. It's not a limitation, it's the thing that makes the tool safe to hand a seller in the middle of a sale.