Ideas Worth Sharing: Unique Bid Auction
By Ralph Cinfio, Director of Operations-Central Division
This game is fun, exciting and interactive. It can be used at any big game banquet event and provides a twist on any traditional raffle.
First, select the item you wish to raffle. It can be anything from flat art, sculpture, home accents, furniture, optics or guns. Higher-end items tend to provide a better return. Once you have selected your prize, you will need to set your ticket price. This will also depend on your cost and desired net return. Generally, I would suggest the higher the fair-market value, the higher the ticket price. Typically $5, $10 and $20 chances are my choice.
Now the game. For the sake of explanation, let’s say we are raffling a firearm worth $400. We have decided we would like to sell a minimum of 100 chances at our 200-person fundraising event. Based on this we have chosen a ticket price of $10 per unique bid. A unique bid is defined as a bid that is submitted after paying the participation fee and, at the completion of the game, is the lowest bid that no other contestant has submitted. We will run the game during the banquet’s social hour from 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Each ticket purchaser pays $10, writes his or her bid number, name and unique bid on a piece of paper and deposits it into a sealed container. Once the game is closed, the volunteers running the game will sort through all of the submissions to find the lowest unique bid. The winner will have to pay the bid price they have submitted. It does make it easier if you have a computer available because you can enter all of the bids into the computer and sort them to help identify the unique low bid.
Listed below is an example of unique bids submitted in our scenario:
The $11.12 bid wins because it is the lowest bid submitted that no other person submitted. Once you have identified and verified who provided the unique low bid, you can collect the bid price and award the prize.