Auctions

The Steven Brust Auction Page

This is the new temporary page added as a home page for a social-media auction which several people helping with.  Natter on that at the very end.

We are raising money for Steven, more or less on general principles.   We recommend sending an email to the auction team with any questions or commentary.  Interestingly, this is also a great means of interacting with us around your interest in a given item.

These items have been sitting in Steven’s garage or attic for years, unless they were given to Corwin at some point, in which case only the auxiliary subject is amended.   In fact, Corwin has been amassing these items for the purposes of arranging this sale.

Items are rather worn; however, hand-written notes are mostly legible, etc, and items have not been exposed to water damage (none noticed so far).  As we prep items for travel we will add to the item descriptions here and then share those updates on Twitter, Facebook and G+ pretty much anywhere else we can think of.

Here are the remaining lots, their current bids, and source of bid and remaining time to auction (assuming no other bid.).  Following that are the auction rules.  Well try to keep it clear where we’ve made changes, and why.  We have no plan to add more items but if something juicy turns up or in whatever other circumstance, we may.

Be aware that the auction timer resets to 17 hours after every bid.

 

Completed Auctions

Item Date Listed Via Final Price
Orca 8/29/2014 email $220.00
Jhegaala 8/29/2014 email $117.00
Paths of the Dead 8/28/2014 facebook $420.00
Robin Hobb 8/28/2014 email $170.00
Iorich 8/29/2014 email $200.00
Lord of Castle Black 8/28/2014 email $417.00
Gaiman/Zelazny 8/28/2014 email $850.00
Athyra 8/29/2014 email $700.00

Descriptions

MS Paths of the Dead: Hand Mark-up, probably from copy-editing or type-setting.

MS Lord of Castle Black: Hand Mark-up, probably from copy-editing or type-setting.

MSS Two drafts “Punch” (several titles, we think),  by Neil Gaiman; incuded is a foreword by Roger Zelazny to The Books of Magic

MS “Assassins Apprentice” by Robin Hobb, Signed; includes a note to Steven soliciting a quote.

MS Athyra, lots of handwriting all over this from lots of people.  There’s a cover letter from Berkley sending it back that I find funny.  Picture eventually.

MS Orca, Maybe just a single set of notes on this one pretty sure they are Steven’s.

MS Jhegaala, Fewer notes on this one, probably from proofreading.

MS Iorich, Fewer notes on this one, probably from proofreading.

Edits: 

added Neil’s name and clarified wording for PUNCH, Sat ~2014-08-30 12:20, Corwin

Aftersale

In the case of things handed to -rather than written by- him, all arrangements have been made by Steven in advance so please do not ask to us reach out directly to people for signatures or certificates of authenticity or anything like that.

Presale

Nope.  Probably not.  Oh, fine, I guess if you need photos or video of me lovingly caressing these objects you can let us know all about your fantasies.

To Purchase

Email will work best for you.  Send me want you want to pay, with the subject line Auction Bid and the item you wish to bid on.

Twitter:  dm me (or shout out to get me to follow, and then <–) with your bid @mplsCorwin, or @dragaera (which I co-run with Dad and the others who do Dreamcafe.com with him.)

Facebook:  Join the Steven Brust Fan Club group (I can’t make it allow others to approve you, so you pretty much have to wait for me.)

G+: yup, I’m there.  There’s a group called Dragaera.  Anyway, share your plan with me.  Any visibility you like is just fine so long as +Corwin Brust (mplsCorwin) can find it.

Sales are final after 17 hrs.  Okay, I know, but it’s about the right amount of time for a uniformly spherical someone to work, sleep, and notice the change and reply back while checking personal emails.

You have 17 hrs to make payment arrangements   At least. I mean, We’ll work with you.  If the auction was hot I’d move as fast as I could.

All items start at $100

You must beat the existing bid by $20.

Shipping Is My Problem™ – if you live far away from the middle of the North American continent, and you are planning to buy lots of Paarfi novels… be kind.

And A Few More Notes

If this are action page and maybe even the Facebook pages may become out of date.  Please watch  twitter #SKZB_AUCTION on Twitter if you hope to keep up minute by minute.

We will reply if you are winning (and also if you are beaten but maybe not as quick), and begin updating others who may be concerned via email, blogs and whatever other social media I am currently plugged into.

If you know Steven and find it easier to comment on his blog, email him, etc, as long as you actually confirm that you have successfully communicated with him, that is fine and well.  That will get to me and things will happen.

Why Are You Doing It This Way

At the risk of starting the very meta discussion I hope to stifle, this is about putting money into Steven (and my) pockets because these things are just sitting in boxes about our homes.

With these factors combined, this approach provides for either the least amount to happen (without my actually shouting into a dark room), or alternately for me to personally arrange for as much as possible of the money trading hands to go to my father.

What exactly are you doing?

And what is a social media auction?

I’m sure we didn’t invent much, if anything here. I’ll admit that we did fail in doing research in advance that might have prevented us from inventing something.

Essentially, we are asking interested members of Steven’s fandom to directly contact us and arrange to make public a bid for one of the unique   The uniqueness, coupled our not having already a mailing list or other device to reach, even nominally, all of Steven’s fan’s at one go with our plans, made us want to pull together people across whatever networks they might be using.  Corwin is something of a social media, um, he’s on most networks- thus a plan was formed.

We maintain a spreadsheet with two tabs (it also had one with with unlisted items, for awhile).

The ITEMS lists the information we are sharing publicly, meaning: item, description, and so on as seen above.  T Tabs include the items we’re listing. We had a separate tab for unlisted items for awhile.  Every hour or several, we update this page from that spreadsheet by cutting-and-pasting from one tab where Google Drive is in command, to another dominated by the power of WordPress.  This is painless, at least to the extent we just aren’t very fussy.

The ADDRESSES tab is where you will find your Real-Enough Name™ and mailing info, if we have received that from you.  (Payment method lives on the items tab.)  Here’s a hint:  no reason not to get on this one, right?

As an experience?  Fanboy tastic, every minute so far.  People were quick to engage and have not given us reason to question that this is cool and fun to do, or that we are finding a cool way to do it.  Moreover, we seem to me communicating clearly enough all around.  So, hopeful.

Key observation:  This not an instantaneous process (though it can go pretty quick.) People wander off, need to sleep, and so forth.  To the extent this is appreciated all around, and that we have no trouble applying bids fairly and in the order they come in, this works.

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