Group Auctions
Group auctions are auctions where more than one artist offers art to the highest bidder. Because of the number of people involved in them, they can often be very difficult to manage and tricky situations can arise. Here are some ways to make your group auction as smooth as possible.
Recruitment:
Know your artists. You want people that you know and trust to be reliable and follow through.
If you make a thread to solicit participants, please make sure to make it in the Pricing, Assistance, and Suggestions subforum.
Purpose:
Make the goal of the auction clear. Is it to raise money for user x? Are the proceeds to be divided evenly between all participants? Everything should be upfront and available for the artists to review before they agree to participate and for bidders to review before they deicide to bid.
Clarity:
Artists should make what they are willing to provide clear and should not agree to more than they think they will be able to do. Auctions are a contract between users.
Reality Check:
It may seem incredibly awesome to have an auction with 25 of your closest artist friends. but is it really practical? The more artists you have, the more likely there are to be problems, either simply organizing the auction and communicating with everyone, all the way up to problems with artists not delivering art or backing out of the auction. take this into account and keep your auction to managable numbers of artists.
When things go wrong:
Sometimes, no matter how careful you are, something goes wrong. An artist backs out. They drop off the face of the earth. It's not fun, but it may happen, so you should be prepared for it.
In the case that an artist backs out
before the auction is completed, you can do one of two things.
Reduce the number of participants
find a replacement artist.
Either of these are fine, however regardless of which one you do, you must offer the high bidder the chance to withdraw their bid. As their bid was made on the original group of artists, it is possible, although unlikely, that a change to it would make them no longer wish to win the auction.
Now for the more stressful possiblity: What if one of my artists backs out after the auction is over?
Here again you have two options.
Find a replacement artist
Offer a refund from the original winning bid.
As a note to auction winner, a single artist failing to deliver art does
not mean that you are entitled to a full refund.
Should the winning bidder not accept a substitute artist, they must recieve a refund equal to the total amount divided by the number of artists, for each artist that does not deliver art.
For example, if you have 20 artists, and the winning bid is 1 million gold, then that works out to 50k per artist. So for each artist that fails to deliver art, if a substitute is not found/accepted, the winning bidder pays 50k less, or, if they have already paid, must be refunded 50k.
We realize that often items are bid instead of pure, making division and refunds more difficult. If this is the case, please be patient, and we will work with you to find the best possible solution.
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