Allocation of Auction Lots

[Bijengum]

I thought this was the NSW Cichlid Society. Where was the notification to members that lots for the auction were available. The notice for the last meeting made no mention that you had to be in the "in crowd" to be allocated lots. I am from the country and cannot attend Saturday night meetings. Do you see that as a fair process. Living in the country I am used to NSW meaning Newcastle- Sydney-Wollongong but I can see from previous posts that this has now been abbreviated to S-Sydney. How about changing your name if that is how the society is going to be run.

[YeW]

David -

Here's some points I have addressed:

I thought this was the NSW Cichlid Society.

Nope. This is the Sydney Cichlid Page.

Where was the notification to members that lots for the auction were available. The notice for the last meeting made no mention that you had to be in the "in crowd" to be allocated lots.

There probably wasnt adequate notification - and for that I apologise.

I am from the country and cannot attend Saturday night meetings. Do you see that as a fair process.

Nope - and we (the committee) have been discussing ways to make it fairer and more accessable to all next time.

Living in the country I am used to NSW meaning Newcastle- Sydney-Wollongong but I can see from previous posts that this has now been abbreviated to S-Sydney.

*shrugs* - David this wasnt an intentional slight against you, there are plenty of ppl who were at the MEETING who missed out. See my point above - I'll be raising a better system for lot allocation at the next meeting... and some members of the committee have already discussed this.

How about changing your name if that is how the society is going to be run.

How about being constructive? We are trying, honestly. I'll be the first person to agree that the way the lots were handed out wasnt ideal - BUT in saying that, being polite gets you further than being abrupt.

[sorroz]

There is a thread going on already which includes this discussion, but i will move this edited version of my reply to here as well

The way the lots were issued was discussed at the Illawarra meeting on Sunday night and myself and the Sydney committee members present on the night stated then, that the matter would be addressed this Friday at the Sydney committee meeting.

This discussion has already commenced and a possible way of allocating lots to Illawarra members is close to happening. I also beleive it is unfair that others who cannot get to the meetings miss out ,while some take huge amounts of lots between family members ( all quite above board with the current rules )

Anita has already mentioned in the other thread,that a group of the Sydney committee had already thought the number of lots allocated to an individual was unfair and excessive ,but a majority vote at that time passed the present lot allocation.

Just so others dont feel hard done by with missing out on lots ,there are Members of the committee who have also missed out on receiving lots because they were busy doing there jobs at the meeting ( does anyone feel that is fair in any way ?)

Guess we will see what happens on Friday night in regard to working out some possible solutions.If you have any workable suggestions please post them up here so they can be mentioned at the meeting.

Thanks Kevin

Illawarra Representative to the NSWCS committee

[Bijengum]

There is a way. The allocation of lots gets advertised on the forum and by email to members. Members are asked to request how many lots they require (with a maximum). Lots are then balloted, giving everyone an equal chance. these could be in lots of 10 say until all are allocated. Just handing them out to those at a particular meeting with no prior notification is ludicrous. This system unfairly advantages those "in the know".

[kazza]

Constructive is a good word.

I understand that the issue of auction lots has been on agendas for a long time and

the situation seems to be getting worse. One would think that the problems could

have been dealt with by now and some solutions created before the lots were handed out. The old cant please everyone is really not good enough anymore.

It was my belief that the club's aim was to help all members and branches and if

giving lots to only some members and only to one branch, then I am very disappointed in the decisions u (committee) have made.

Regards Karen

[YeW]

David -

As I said above - I most certainly understand & respect why you are not happy.

We are bringing these ideas to the NSWCS committee... however, the SCP (and its forums) are separate to the NSWCS.

[YeW]

Karen -

You said:

The old cant please everyone is really not good enough anymore.

It was my belief that the club's aim was to help all members and branches and if

giving lots to only some members and only to one branch, then I am very disappointed in the decisions u (committee) have made.

The majority of the committee agree with you. This will be dealt with at the committee meeting (although it is probably too late to do much extra for the next auction). But please dont vent your rage on ppl who are trying to fix this.

[Anita_ozfish]

It was my belief that the club's aim was to help all members and branches and if

giving lots to only some members and only to one branch, then I am very disappointed in the decisions u (committee) have made.

Karen, they are the clubs aims and no one decided who was to receive lots and who wouldn't. As was already stated, committee members also missed out on getting lots because they were busy doing jobs while the lots were being issued. Why not vent your frustration (along with us) at the lot horders who grab as many as they can and leave none for the majority.

Dave has come up with what I believe to be a very fair distribution system for all members which will be discussed at the committee meeting. It might be a bit late for this one but hopefully we can sort something out there as well.

[The NSW Cichlid Society]

Hi Everyone,

Unfortunately the entire allocation of lots for the upcoming March Auction was snapped up by the members present at the Feb meeting, within about half an hour (even members who attended the meeting missed out on lots). We have never seen the lots go out as quick as that and obviously recognise that this is a far from ideal scenario. Committee will be drastically overhauling the way the lots will be distributed in future auctions.

As it stands the Auction Lots have always been distributed on a first in first serve basis and are always released to the membership at the meeting before the auction. Any remaining lots are usually allocated to members via mail. The club has always rewarded those members who actively participate and contribute to the club by attending meetings, first dibs on the lot numbers (some people even travel from Wollongong, Newcastle and even Canberra to ensure they get lots). This time we just had a hell of allot more interest than previous auctions. A total of 32 different members took lots for the auction with 7 of those members taking the full allocation of 64 from the total of 1000 lots. This is no different to the way lots were allocated at the October 03 Auction which we recieved no complaints over.

Regarding the issue of an Illawarra allocation, this has never happened before but we are happy to consider it. Do Illawarra send an allocation of lots up to Sydney to be distributed at our meeting? All you had to do is ask for an allocation to be assigned to Illawarra prior to the lots release in Feb. We are not mind readers and if you don't ask for lots ahead of there release how are we meant to know that you want lots numbers. You have an Illawarra representative on the NSWCS Committee to make such arrangements and ensure the Illawarra branch has a say and does not get forgotten.

Sorry for the inconvenience to everyone but as has been said previously committee will be discussing at the next committee meeting how to ensure that this scenario does not occur at future auctions.

Please remember that the auctions are a huge effort and are logistically very difficult to plan and prepare to ensure the day is a success for the members and public. The committee are all volunteers and have many other things to keep us busy. Sometimes things don’t go to plan but all we can do is our best to rectify the problems next time around. If anyone out there thinks they can do better and would like to be involved why not join the shadow committee or volunteer to help out on Auction day

Regards,

Anthony Ramsey

President NSWCS

[aymenz]

good words anthony ...

c ya

[Bijengum]

Anthony,

I well appreciate that the workers are all volunteers. Having been involved with various organisations I know the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes. However any organisation has to be and has to be seen to be fair to all its membership. I look forward to some constructive changes to the system.

If by your comment that the system rewards those that regularly attend meetings and participate you mean you are only really interested in Sydney members say so and change the name and constitution to reflect that. Call it the Sydney Cichlid Society and be done with it. If the aims to promote the Cichlid species then I would have thought that you would welcome a more diverse membership and actively encourage it.

David

[Anita_ozfish]

Hi David,

I will get off the subject of auction lots for a moment and digress into this discussion.You made this point in one of your earlier posts and I was tempted to reply then and seeing you have brought it up again, I will do so now.

If by your comment that the system rewards those that regularly attend meetings and participate you mean you are only really interested in Sydney members say so and change the name and constitution to reflect that. Call it the Sydney Cichlid Society and be done with it.

There are some members of the club/committee who think that there should be a "body" of members who should run the NSWCS and they in turn should oversee the running of all the "branches". So you would have the NSWCS, the Illawarra Branch, Sydney Branch, a Newcastle Branch?? etc etc etc. Branches would be responsible for their own day to day running of things and the NSWCS would be like a body corporate with reps from each branch on the team. The NSWCS would be responsible for distribution of the mags and a few other things but otherwise each branch would pretty well be left to their own devices.

When this suggestion was put forward to members it was strongly voted against by those present. The main problem was an insurance issue although this seems to change depending on which person from the insurance company you happen to talk to. Personally, I believe that the people who were supportive of this change were not given a fair chance to put their point across and at the time, it was all deemed too difficult to handle and the threat of people not being covered with insurance weighed heavily in the decision making. I also felt that a lot of members didn't really care one way or another.

Needless to say a job like this is a mammoth change, constitutionally wise and we have been so flat out on other things that we haven't even raised the topic at all in our time on committee but I am glad you have brought it up as I feel that the whole Society issue needs to be revised.

Cheers

Anita

[Gav]

David,

Its not only country members who miss out mate. I went up the first time I heard that lots were being given out (i missed the first call). I then found out that all lots were gone! So its not just country members that missed out. If a total of 32 people got ALL the lots, it looks like MOST the membership missed out. I think the issue here has more to do with greed on the part of those that took all of these lots, along with an issue with the way lots are distributed. Obviously something will be done for the future, but you aren't alone in missing out here.

But considering there is only 1000 lots, and 450 or so were taken by SEVEN members, it doesn't leave much for the rest eh? and of the rest, 25 took 500 lots, so that is at least 20 each. obviously some would have had considerably less as 20 lots would sell out most peoples entire fish stocks. I am sure most people would love to know all about who the lot horders are, after all their greed is the reason MOST people missed out!

[chorrylan]

Ouch...

only 32 members got lots that's worse than I imagined.

Does anyone know what the distribution has been like in the past?

I know it won't help much (and will add to Anthony's admin time) but how about a auction-lot-amnesty and redistribution?

Anyone who has more than say.... 16 lots (a number carefully selected to cause me the least inconvenience ) can voluntarily pass them on to another member or preferably back to the pool and they can be distributed using a mechanism like the one David has suggested.

There's a mailout planned mid-month to send the species list anyway so any re-allocated lots could be sent at the same time without too much additional effort.

I have 24 (and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty so there... oh ok maybe a teensy bit ) and will only whinge and whine a nominal amount to give 8 back.

This'll put you on the spot David... I had offered to pass the 8 on to you. Do you still want them or should I return them to the pool and you take your chances with the mob. (ooh I'm a ba$#ard he he)

Two of the other guys here are trying to fine tune their auction plans at the moment and will probably sell some of the fish now rather than at auction so they can return a few of the lots.

(they skewed the numbers Anthony gave.... I was picking up their lots for both of them but couldn't remember one of the guys membership numbers so got them all in one of their names.... so there was really only 6 people who got the full 64 lots)

[Chester]

I hope that the people who got 64 lots aren't just going to put in electric blue and yellow.

It seems like the major auction could end up with less variaty than a mini auction. Now that is a shame.

[ViS]

That's exactly what I was thinking.

I hope the 32 people that got the lots have most types of available fish to put into the auction, or we are going to have the most boring auction to date....

I know several people who missed out had plenty of uncommon fish to put in which would have made for a much more interesting day.

[onlyme]

I have said a lot of this stuff before, but here goes again.

I believe that the hobby and commercially ie, the selling of fish are inseparable. In reality if you can't sell them you can't breed them, this is especially true for South Americans who have enormous spawns.

What would fix the problem here is more lot numbers, but 1000 in one day is about all you can physically do. In fact I reckon about 800 actual called lots is about the upper limit. The only answer I can com up with is more major auctions, say 4 a year instead of 2. The other possiblilty is to take the pressure off major auctions with an increase in the mini auction to about 200 lots which I believe is very possible with significant structual change.

One of the things that would greatly improve this process is a weighting to unreserved lots. Say in the major auctions a limit of 10 reserverd lots and 30 unreserved and a similar ratio in the mini auctions. Unreserved lot sell quicker than reserved lots a rule of thumb.

As was said earlier if 900 lots were blues and yellows this also could fix the problem for next time. The result for the vendors would be so financially poor they would have to think twice about doing it again. They could take them hme again but that may be an even worse outcome. The auction process is to some degree self maintaining if it is a true "best price sale" auction, that is why I advocate a bias towards unreserved lots.

I am all for people being able to sell more fish than less fish, so my bias will always be toward large or no limits on what people can sell and the facilitation of this by more available lots.

Craig Douglas.

[Chester]

I don't think we need more major auctions. That is just too much work for the volunteers on the committee.

I thought the society was trying to get people to put more fish in each lot, it doesn't seem like it if they are giving out such large number of lots to individuals. It will just mean that you'll end up with 2 or 3 fish per lot whereas if less lots were issued we would have 5 or 6. Either way the seller will still cleans out their fishroom but at least by giving each member less lots then more people will get an opportunity to participate and enter lots into the auction.

Any, that is my 2 cents worth.

[onlyme]

Good point about the larger lots rodney, but it would be hard to administer.

Maybe another commitee or even 2 could be setup to run additional sales?

THe other way is to sell common, numerically strong species "in a line". That is, if there are 50 bags of E blues, you do one call for say 20 bags, highest bidder gets first choice, then the under bidder etc.. Finally the balance is offered as one lot, highest bidder takes all. This would suit commercial buyers but may vex some vendors. This concept would need work to make it acceptable but it is cmmon place in general chattles sales.

Craig.

[Gav]

cant say i agree with your last point craig, the reason for the auctions is to help members sell their fish for a decent price, so you can't really compare to chattles sales as they are primarily to just get rid of stuff.

true some work could be done on the non reserve lots, but realistically that is also the fault of the auctioneer at times. if you get a lot and start it rediculously low it always goes fast. too many times they want the reserve as the first bid! you go to any auction of livestock and the reserve price is almost NEVER the starting price. you start low, work the bidding and get momentum going. that way you easily get past reserve. if not, you then ask the question of the seller. sooooo much time is wasted waiting for that first bid its not funny. its just little things like that that speed things up.

but to get back to the point of this discussion, like andy said, how much uncommon stuff can we expect when so few people have the lots? with 40% of lots being controlled by 6 people, i can't honestly see a huge amount of variance in the fish we see. I like the idea of lauries, calling the allocation void and then reallocating. that would certainly be a much fairer way for ALL members to get involved!

[gswalker]

excuse my ignorance but do these "lots' mean i cant bring fish to the auction for me to sell if i didnt buy the lots?

[Gav]

sure does Gav, it means u like most of us miss out!

oh and they are free, you just ask for a certain number of lots. so if you think you will have 20 things to sell, you ask for 20 lots.

[Rol&Jas]

I have also missed out on the lots, but I do not blame anyone as it was my fault. Last meeting I sold fishes through the Mini Auction for the first time. Unfortunately, I have totally misunderstood the lots allocation process and I did not rush to get lots for me. I have heard that many committee members also missed out.

Reading through this string I have noticed that everyone has different ideas how the auctions should go. Unfortunately, not everyone can be satisfied. Probably at the next meeting we should plan different scenarios for the auction and let the members to vote how do they want the acutions.

I know that many members would like to sell more fishes on the auctions, but then the auctions will take lot longer to run and the committee has to work lot more.

More big auctions could be a good idea for sellers, but we also have to see the buyers point of views. If we have too many auctions demand might go down and we will not be able to sell some fishes at all or we will need to sell them well under reserve price.

Going back to the lots allocation problem. I think members who are interested should e-mail or call the NSW Cichlid Society letting them know that they would like to get auction lots. This should happen maybe 2 months before a major auction with a deadline. When the Society has the total number of members that want to sell, they should allocate equal number of lot numbers to these members. Eg. 100 members are interested and there are 1000 lots, each member would get 10 lots. If a member does not want 10 lots just 5 then should return 5 lots to to NSW Cichlid Society for re-distribution. This way everyone could be happy without blaming the admin or other members.

Look, that is just a simple suggestion. I'm pretty sure that other people would come up with different ideas

[Gav]

I believe that there is a commitee meeting this Friday night at 7.30 pm at quburn aquarium. now as far as I remember, the constitution says that ANY member can attend a commitee meeting and voice their opinion. They cannot get a vote but at least they can be heard. So how about any or all people that are concerned about this situation just rock on up to auburn this Friday and fill the place with disapproving opinions. that would surely help us get a redistribution as it is in the interests of MOST members to have this done!

after all the commitee is only there to represent the membership and listen to their ideas, not to force their own ideas on the membership.

remember we get one auction ever six months, and for me I can't really see much point in this next auction based on how few sellers there currently is. a redistribution is the only fair way to benefit the entire membership of the society, especially considering how little information was given out prior to the meeting about the allocation of lots.

[chorrylan]

hi,

remember there is a limit of 5 bags of the same species folks so even the people who have 64 lots need to sell 13 different species; they can't all be electric blues.

The idea of amalgamating some of the more common lines has potential.

You could have a *huge* impact on the overall time for the auction by amalgamating just a few of the lines.

eg create categories for

- electric yellow fry

- electric blue fry

- bristlenose fry

and perhaps 2 or 3 others (doesn't need to be many)

At checkin time they get parked in designated areas then at designated times (say every second lap around the rest of the lots) run say 5 auction items for each category.

The highest bidder for each auction-item gets their choice of bags (they can queue up to take their turn at selecting a bag the same way the giant-fish-raffle works)

The fifth one sets a price for subsequent bags and people can queue up to take their choice or a runner can dole 'em out to anyone who wants 'em, ie operate like a trade-table rather than an auction.

These categories of items should be treated differently to the others and not just to reduce time.

For sellers these bread and butter items help pay for the newer and more expensive fish. For buyers these are the staple items they get started with.

The buyers of such stuff appears to be newer fishkeepers who are probably better served by being able to purchase good quality fish at a price fairly set rather than bothering with an auction process on each and every item.