It’s been a new way of doing business for Fraser Auction Services since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place for social distancing. 

Fraser Auction Services owner, Scott Campbell, says holding their auctions sales through online bidding has worked fairly well over the past number of months. 

Campbell explains online bidding takes place across an entire week, rather than just one day.  Their annual consignment auction in Killarney is an example of an annual event that takes place in early spring but had been postponed due to COVID-19 this year.   

The Brandon consignment sale took place in mid-June and did fairly well with online bidding.  The Killarney sale was originally set for April but was postponed due to the pandemic.   

Both consignment sales draw hundreds of people from Manitoba and neighbouring provinces as there is a wide variety of items, from boats and campers to lawn care and Ag machinery, and more!   The Brandon consignment sale at the Fraser Auction site on the east side of the city of Brandon on Hwy 10, had a great response from buyers in mid-June, even though the community of regular auction sale attendees weren’t able to attend in person. 

Campbell is expecting the Killarney sale will be well received as well. And, as per usual, they have a wide variety of items to offer buyers.  “That sale will be running on a timed online and we’ve been working with Del and Gert (Smith) to get that up and running,” says Campbell.  “It will be starting on the 18th of July and it will have one full week of bidding as well.” 

“Just because of the sheer amount of equipment that’s in those consignment sales, they will be held as a timed-only so there’ll be no auctioneers calling but the buyers will have a week to bid against each other online on those items.” 

Campbell says they’ve been using online auction software over the past 5 years to enable internet broadcasting of sales, but when the majority of auctions are online due to COVID-19 regulations, new problems seem to surface.  But even then, they’ve been able to work out the kinks and run a successful series of sales.