Auction - Common Uses

Common Uses

Auctions are publicly and privately seen in several contexts and almost anything can be sold at auction. Some typical auction arenas include the following:

• The antique business, where besides being an opportunity for trade they also serve as social occasions and entertainment
• In the sale of collectibles such as stamps, coins, classic cars, fine art and luxury real estate
• The wine auction business, where serious collectors can gain access to rare bottles and mature vintages, not typically available through retail channels
• In the sale of all types of real property including residential and commercial real estate, farms, vacant lots and land.
• For the sale of consumer second-hand goods of all kinds, particularly farm (equipment) and house clearances and online auctions.
• Sale of industrial machinery, both surplus or through insolvency.
• In commodities auctions, like the fish wholesale auctions
• In livestock auctions where sheep, cattle, pigs and other livestock are sold. Sometimes very large numbers of stock are auctioned, such as the regular sales of 50,000 or more sheep during a day in New South Wales.
• In wool auctions where international agents purchase lots of wool
• Thoroughbred horses, where yearling horses and other bloodstock are auctioned.
• In legal contexts where forced auctions occur, as when one's farm or house is sold at auction on the courthouse steps.
• Travel tickets. One example is SJ AB in Sweden auctioning surplus at Tradera (Swedish eBay).
• Holidays. A variety of holidays are available for sale online particularly via eBay. Vacation rentals appear to be most common. Many holiday auction websites have launched but failed.
• Self storage units. In certain jurisdictions, if a storage facility's tenant fails to pay his/her rent, the contents of his/her locker(s) may be sold at a public auction. Several television shows focus on such auctions, including Storage Wars and Auction Hunters.

Although less publicly visible, the most economically important auctions are the commodities auctions in which the bidders are businesses even up to corporation level. Examples of this type of auction include:

• Sales of businesses
• Spectrum auctions, in which companies purchase licenses to use portions of the electromagnetic spectrum for communications (e.g., mobile phone networks)
• Private electronic markets using combinatorial auction techniques to continuously sell commodities (coal, iron ore, grain, water...) to a pre-qualified group of buyers (based on price and non-price factors)
• Timber auctions, in which companies purchase licenses to log on government land
• Timber allocation auctions, in which companies purchase timber directly from the government Forest Auctions
• Electricity auctions, in which large-scale generators and consumers of electricity bid on generating contracts
• Environmental auctions, in which companies bid for licenses to avoid being required to decrease their environmental impact. These include auctions in emissions trading schemes.
• Debt auctions, in which governments sell debt instruments, such as bonds, to investors. The auction is usually sealed and the uniform price paid by the investors is typically the best non-winning bid. In most cases, investors can also place so called non-competitive bids, which indicates an interest to purchase the debt instrument at the resulting price, whatever it may be
• Auto auctions, in which car dealers purchase used vehicles to retail to the public.