Today, auction site Game Auctions Online (GAO) will be hosting its monthly auction and farmers from all nine provinces are expected to bid on the rare and high-end species the website offers. When GAO started three years ago they hosted six auctions a year, but now marketing manager Leon Roodt said they had monthly auctions that saw lots of bids from across the country.
"Our head office is situated near Bela-Bela in Limpopo, but we have had bids from the Eastern Cape and Thabazimbi on the same lot. That's what makes online auctions different," Roodt said.
Bidders only register once to have access to the monthly auctions. Once registered, they can take a look at the lots on offer. The website provides pictures and detailed profiles on each lot - ages, bloodlines and horn lengths - and bidders can put their offers in within the timeframe provided for the auctions.
Today's auction starts at 10am and the highest bid at 8pm wins the auction. There has already been a lot of interest in a rare Ankole-Watusi cow and sables of exceptional genetics on offer.
"We need to keep people interested, and one way of doing that is by offering something special every time. This time I think the Ankole-Watusi is something quite exceptional," Roodt said.
Wildlife Ranching South Africa (WRSA) Eastern Cape vice-chairman John Hurter believes online auctions will go from strength to strength as more well-known breeders start putting their stock up for auction.
"I believe attending an auction in person and being able to see the product is still first prize, but we cannot always attend auctions all over the country, and online auctions is an easy way of gaining access to high-end animals from far away," Hurter said.
"As with any business you need to be careful who you buy from, and we are still crunching the numbers to see just how successful online auctions really are.
"But we see an increased number of established breeders putting lots up for auction, so it is definitely gaining momentum."
WRSA Wildlife Rancher of the Year Arthur Rudman, from Blaauwkrantz Safaris near Uitenhage, said online auctions were a great advantage to buyers who did not have to travel vast distances to buy quality game. "If you can buy a whole farm online, why not game?"
Source: Herald
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