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[Kotenokgaff]

First of all of course thank you guys for making artshow real and doing everything for us artists to make possible to show and sell our works.

Since i couldn't visit EF i ask my friend Kisu to be my agent. And he kindly agreed.

Everything is great, he send me a shot of my panel (btw it become bigger! at least some years ago when i was at EF, full panel was way smaller!)

But the one thing i didn't like even when i visited EF is a final paper "Artwork sold"

there is 6 columns which are: Artist, Title, Sale, Min Bid, Win Bid, Bidder

As an artist for me is very interesting not only the final winning bid but also a how mch bids did i get!

So what if you add another one column? "Total bids" for example which will be a number of bids the art piece got. You can put this column between Min bid and Win bid

Another one suggestion is to write not a bidder number but his nickname! For example me is important to say thank you to those who bought my paintings...

will be glad to hear anwer from EF team.

Thanks!

[Zefiro]

Thank you for your suggestion.

Do I assume correctly that by looking at the "number of bids" what you are actually interested in is the popularity of the piece?

The number of bids will be a number between 1 (sold to first bidder) and perhaps 10 (maximum amount of bids until it goes to the auction, varies per year).
It is very easy to think of this number as a 1-10 rating of the piece, but this would be highly misleading.

For example, if the first bidder falls in love with the piece and bids his total maximum amount - others who are equally interested might already be out, as it got to high for them in the first round. But just from the numbers it would look like it went for the first bidder.

Or the ebay-effect: bidding starts extremly low and only the last one or two bids go to the final price. Then you have a lot of bids, but the popularity might be similar to the first case, but you can't tell from the number.

Or you have two bidders who fight with each other. From the total bid number you can't see that it's basically just two persons, even though both of them are highly interested in the piece.

Finally, if it goes to auction it's not really possible to count bids there, so after the "go to auction"-amount of bids, the numbers won't tell anything about the popularity in the auction.

Thus, even if it were easy for the artshow team to include this column - and given the amount of bidsheets they have to count by hand and enter into the system they might simply have no time for that between art show close, auction and sale - I believe a number with suggests it has a popularity meaning, but essentially can be quite random, could do more harm than good.


(I'm not from the artshow department, they will probably answer separately)

*purrrrr*

[ysegrim]

First of all, I agree with everything Zefiro said about the significance of that figure.
For example, we had both the case where one participant said, right after the art show started, "This is my picture. When I look at it, I hear music playing, and I am in a different world" -- and bid 500 Euros, six times the starting bid. He won with that bid. And we had the case where one item went into the auction at mere 15,- over the start bid, because two bidders thought it was only worth 2-EUR-increments.

Second, the number of bids has no value at all for the execution of the art show (except for "0 bids -> back to the artist" and "10 bids -> auction"). This means that the team would need to enter more than 800 numbers which they have no use for. This would mean that there is less time for sanity checks, precautions, quality management, etc -- in short, more errors. So the overall quality of the art show handling would go down.

Third, all this information is available to the artist, when they fetch their unsold artwork, because the bid stickers should still hang on the panels. (If this is not the case, Cairyn/b_p, please correct me). Anyways, for artists or other parties who are interested in the number of bids, it should not be a problem at all to look at the bid sheets right before, and probably also during art show closing. So please ask your agent to collect any statistical data you are interested in that the art show team can not provide.

[Cairyn]

Everything is great, he send me a shot of my panel (btw it become bigger! at least some years ago when i was at EF, full panel was way smaller!)

umm, no? Must be a photographic illusion, since we have been using these panels (2m x 1m) from the very beginning.

As an artist for me is very interesting not only the final winning bid but also a how mch bids did i get!

So what if you add another one column? "Total bids" for example which will be a number of bids the art piece got. You can put this column between Min bid and Win bid

I agree with what Zefiro and ysegrim said on this topic. To judge the piece's popularity, you would need to look at the full bidding history, not just the number of bids. This includes the auction bidding. Plus, the time when bids are placed. Otherwise, you wouldn't know who bid what amount when: initially, or in the heat of closing, or deliberately over time. Were two people interested in the exhibit or ten? And why did others not bid, because they didn't like the exhibit? Or because the min bid was too high? Or because someone initially placed a high bid already?

These are questions that are pretty hard to decide.

Judging a piece from the number of bids can be deceptive. And we do not have the time to track the number of bids in the database, or even the bidding history.

Yes, the bidsheets are still hanging when the unsold pieces are picked up. So, your agent would be able to get that information for you, as ysegrim suggested.

Another one suggestion is to write not a bidder number but his nickname! For example me is important to say thank you to those who bought my paintings...

Actually that is a feature of the receipts under normal circumstances, we just had a little issue with bidder numbers and had to drop this column for the current year. We try to reintroduce it next year again.