Ideas and comments about a silent auction

We are getting ready to host our first silent auction sale on our club calves.  We are looking to sell 6-10 prospect heifers and steers at our farm as well as have 3-5 bred replacement heifers sired by club bulls bred back to our Angus herdsire. 

Any ideas about things that do work or don't work at these types of sales.

I think this is the only way to go, hands down. I know there has to be something wrong with it, but if you get the right people wanting the same calf, the sky is the limit. I think you will like your results with this!

I have done a couple and think it works really well!  No overhead.... things I learned over time: set minimum bid increments as I didn't think of this first time and literally had people going by the dollar!  Not cool.... 
Another change I added was that I had set a time when the sale would end, then took the top three bidders on each calf and let them bid it out till they gave to each other.  Just had them gather around and started at the last highest bid. (Not sure that made sense?) But the down side of that is that they have to stay till the end.... just a couple options. 

I had good luck with the silent auction and would have continued doing but got enough customers willing to come to ranch and buy them without "putting on a sale"! 

Good luck...

I attended a silent auction in Texas several years ago and it was an amazing thing to watch. The owner of the calves had about 30-40 calves ( of all shapes and sizes .. and of several  variations of quality). He split them into pens of approx 8 head and put a base price on each pen. For example, Pen 1 may have had a base price of $800, Pen 2 a base price of $1000 and etc . The best calves as the owner saw them) had a base price of $2000. He had a bid box on each pen. If you were interested in a calf in a pen, you wrote the tag number and your name and address on the card and put it in the box. At 3 pm, the bids were closed and each bid box was opened. If only one person had bid on any calf in that pen, they purchased that calf at the base price. If there was more than one bidder on any price, a small auction was held between only the people who had placed a bid in the box, for that particular calf. It took about an hour before all the calves were dealt with. When it was all over the top steer brought $8000 and I found it interesting that he did not come out of the group with the highest base price. He came out of a pen with the 3rd highest bid price.  Three different families had bid on the steer so the bidding was held between only them. One bowed out of the bidding fairly quickly, but the other two, butted heads for awhile. Only 1 calf did not sell. The calves averaged just short of $2000.

usually at the end, the owners call all the bidders of a calf and bid it up from there till everyone quits.

We let them know that they have 45 minutes to bid.  At the end of that time, we draw a red line under the last bidder.  After that, if you still want on that animal, you have 5 minutes to put down your number.  If there is more than one bidder below the line in 5 minutes, we open up a live auction between the bidders ONLY on under the line.  We have done this with our bull sale for the last 12 years.  The silent auction is an extremely cheap and feasible way to sell your animals.  Every year we have gained more bidders because people don't have to impulse buy as they sometimes do in live auctions when they get outbid on their first choices.

Good Luck!!!