Auction style GA: Items are given separate threads in which members bid against each other in order to raise money for the group auction. Best used for expensive auctions.

You may NOT Group Auction/Buy anything for sale by a member on the community itself (IE; stuff members wish to dispose of in one lot). This is non-negotiable. If you wish to sell a box of stuff, it can not be GAed by the community unless it is for sale on a third-party auction site such as Ebay (putting it on your own LJ is not an applicable loophole as it is not an AUCTION site). The practice of GAing member's lots caused over half a year of endless confusion and trouble for PKMNcollectors mods and members, resulting in this ban of the practice. Our apologies.

These are the rules you must follow when running a group auction/group buy (be clear in your post which kind yours is!).

1. A user may NOT run more than 2 group auctions/group buys at one time. Your part in a GA is considered complete once you are no longer participating in running it whatsoever, meaning items have been shipped to winners if you were the shipper, or all payments have been gathered if you were responsible for that, etc.
2. No more than two runners are necessary, and at least one runner must have prior GA expierience.
3. Keep all posts "members only" to prevent outside competition.
4. State which items you plan to claim, and the price you are claiming them for. It is also USUALLY unreasonable to claim more than 2 items per runner (case-by-case basis). See "Claims" info below for how to determine if your claim price and amount is fair or not.
5. Two group auctions for the same lot cannot be run at the same time, though it is not forbidden for members to bid against the group auction if nothing else can be worked out.
6. Keep the url to the auction private. If a participant would like to see the url, it should be shared in private at the discretion of the runners.
7. At the end of the auction post a screenshot of the invoice and the link to the finished auction.
8. In the event that items are left unclaimed or unpaid for, there are various options. Please look under "GA Issues" for more details.
9. Members who are new, or seem unsure of how to run a group auction will be asked to take down their auction. Members who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy may be banned from hosting group auctions.
10. Use a countdown timer to avoid confusion about the end time of your GA. Here is one that has been used often.

In group auctions the users who run it (AKA: the people who do all of the hard work!) are able to claim the items they want before everyone else begins bidding/claiming. If you are running or participating in the running of a group auction, claiming the items you want without having to bidwar is your reward. Just keep in mind that claiming the most sought-after item and not contributing its realistic worth will make it more difficult to reach your goal.

All deputy service fees/other applicable fees will be totaled and divided by the number of group auction participants. That will then be added to each participant's total cost. Fair, and easy!

There are usually three total kinds of shipping involved in a GA:

Internal shipping in Japan is usually fairly cheap, and because of Japan's internal shipping methods, often not determined by weight, but by size of the package. Thus internal shipping can be divided equally between all participants no matter the amount of items they ordered. In cases of participants winning numerous or particularly heavy items, their percentage of international shipping, which is weight-based, should be calculated proportionately. This is a case by case basis, and you should increase their shipping cost by a reasonable percentage garnered from the amount and/or weight of their items.

Remember, only international shipping (and final shipping, of course) may be divided up in this way. Fees and internal shipping are always divided equally by the number of participants. GA Runners in the USA can use this USPS calculator to figure out shipping costs! Also, if your auction was really large, save money for everyone and buy packing materials in bulk! Of course all packing material costs are included in S/H fees charged to the buyers, so it helps everyone out.

The formula to figure out what everyone owes is simple: (person's bid) x (total cost / total raised)

EXAMPLE: If your group auction raised a total of $40...
Your cost of auction is $50 (including fees).
Your shipping cost is $10.
Now it's time to figure out what your bidders owe.
Bidder1 has a bid of $10.00... ( $10.00 ) X ( $50/$40 ) = $12.50 (MATH RULE DO STUFF INSIDE PARENTHESIS FIRST!)

This sometimes happens, where not an extra 10-20$ is raised, but an extra 50$-500$ is raised (yes, we've had cases with a 500$ surplus). In this case, those lucky enough to have won their item will get a discount if applicable. This discount will be determined by taking the same PERCENTAGE off everyone's total. NO OTHER METHOD WILL BE ACCEPTED. Not everyone's discount will be the same because not everyone contributed the same to winning the auction. Remember that the runner of an auction may keep some extra for materials cost and their own labor cost if the auction was especially large or stressful. Here is the formula for calculating your group auction's totals (hint... it's the same as the regular one!): (person's bid) x (total cost / total raised)

This does sometimes happen. What you should NOT do is PM/message the runner threatening them or trying to "scare" them off (if this ever happens, runners must contact a mod immediately to report the threat). Instead, you should first see if the item you wanted from the auction was claimed by the runners. If not, it's best to just bid on it as part of the GA. If the item you wanted was claimed by the runners, or you wanted the entire auction for your own personal reasons, you will have to bid against the GA participants. Likewise, if you wanted to GA it yourself, but they posted first, unfortunately it is first-come-first-served. If you feel uncomfortable or feel that the participants will antagonize you for bidding against them, you can contact a moderator about the situation. If your GA is outbid by a member or the auction you wanted was made into a GA - it happens, and it is a bad feeling, but try not to take it personally. There will be another chance!

Shill bidding, in short, is when someone calculates how much a group auction has raised, and bids up the auction to force participants to pay the maximum amount, or more in order to win. This practice is extremely dishonest, and against the rules of the auction host site (such as ebay) but that has not prevented this from happening. Similarly, some former members began adding up totals raised by GAs and exploiting middleman "internal bidding" in order to win the auction without having to actually outbid what the GA raised. This is also exploiting the GA system and will not be tolerated, especially if it's discovered it has been done multiple times or for malicious reasons.


PLEASE report ANY suspicions of shill bidding or dishonest exploitation of middleman internal bidding. Notice that if you are caught shill-bidding, you will be automatically banned for life from the community. If you think because you are using Ebay where usernames are "hidden" you will not be found out, you are sadly mistaken, as the multiple shill bidders we previously caught were also assuming they were safe due to this. You WILL be caught.

This has also happened now and again due to bad math or situations like LJ downtime, etc. What you must do in the event that you needed to extend GA bidding beyond the auction's end date, or the auction ended before the GA for whatever reason, is NOT ANNOUNCE TO THE COMMUNITY THAT THE ACTUAL AUCTION IS ENDED. This will result in people bidding beyond their actual capacity as they know they are assured of a discount, and can cause major problems for the entire Group Auction. Simply say nothing at all about the auction having ended, if any kind of announcement is at all necessary, which it may not be.

This happens! Leftovers that were CLEARLY VISIBLE but still got NO TAKERS, are released into the "public domain": the runner may sell or keep them.

Contact one of the mods or the GA mod if this is the case. All GA runners should post the total invoice (copy and pasted or screenshot) and a link to the auction once it is over, so it should be tough to scam GA participants, but just let us know if something is making you feel uncomfortable about how a GA is being run.

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