Small Scale Militaria & Live Auctions

[tmanthegreat]

With the current evolutions in our hobby and the fact that many items have become hard to find, I've recently stumbled on a rather interesting route to track down small scale military items - live auctions. Has anyone tried this route before?

There are some auction houses that specialize in antique toys and toys in general and some offer absentee bidding via their own websites, contracted auctioneer websites, by phone, etc. It can be a little less immediate than ebay and its quite likely that priority will go to a live bidder rather than an absentee one. Another drawback to live auctions is that there is a premium on top of the bid price, but sometimes auction houses seem to include ways to reduce this either by method of payment, attendance in person, etc.

I recently participated in an auction (via a free online absentee bidder service) for an MIB 1:6 21c Stuart tank at an auction house in Indiana that specializes in antique trains and toys. After trying a few ebay auctions that went beyond my price range, I thought I'd give this a try and see how it went. Lo and behold, I was successful and paid much less than the going ebay rate for the same item. Looking through the catalogue for the same auction also revealed some other interesting items, including a ZPA Spitife as part of another lot...

Just thought I'd share

[ram04]

Would you mind telling which auction service you used?, I have found a few on the web, but they never seem current.

[tmanthegreat]

I used the LiveAuctioneers website: http://www.liveauctioneers.com/. LiveAuctioneers.com links bidders to traditional auction events broadcast in real time via the Internet. It is sort of like ebay, though it connects you as an absentee bidder to real auctions. Again, I really just sort of stumbled into this as of last week, and I've aparently won an item at auction in Indiana now, so I'm figuring this out as I go

The auction house in Indiana (where the auction in which I participated remotely was held) was Stout Auctions. They are aparently well known and specialize in toy trains, etc, but also auction/sell other toys (including the stuff we like). One can participate as an absentee bidder directly from their website by purchasing one of their catalogues for $30-$40 or by going through the LiveAuctioneers website. Here's the Stout Auction's website: http://www.stoutauctions.com/

Again, just another interesting means by which we may be able to track down and obtain some hard to find items without having to mess with ebay...

[ram04]

Thanks, I'll check it out

[AMERICAN_GRENADIER]

nice tip