Just found this, so I checked it out.

An auction on TradeMe for a bunch of smurfs from the 70's.
< http://www.trademe.co.nz/Antiques-collectables/Movie-TV-memorabilia/Smurfs/auction-314211159.htm >

So far 18500 page views, over 500 watches at 9am yesterday morning when the page views was only 12000 and not a single bid. Start is the reserve, and is set at $300 for 63 smurfs with 3 sets of twins.

What to learn here about marketing? Well, firstly it is not that surprising that no bids have been placed. The questions are not being answered with any particular flair or panache. Unlike the time travel washing machine, the ghost in a bottle and others, this is not quite as quirky, but still has heaps of potential. So much potential.

What do I mean? Well if this was my collection (BTW I am not selling our family collection for any amount of money - we must have double what is listed on this auction, hopefully, still - *skype to mum in america*) I would be doing this all very differently.

Click on the Read More to see what I mean.
UPDATE: Auction sold for $505, the reserve was only $300 and the auction received 24545 views. Impressive stats - could have been way more tho....

Invest in the process, and create an interesting auction.

I would normally not be giving away brilliant ideas as I am quite greedy like that, but in this case I can not ever see me selling off any large collections of things we may have in storage. Anyone that knows me will understand that point!

So what would I be doing. Well for one, I would have spent a few minutes watching some smurf clips on youtube. That way I would understand right away that the smurfs have a very particular way of responding and communicating.

That is where I would start to inject some humour into the auction. Every response would be that of a particular smurf, like they had hijacked the answers. Start some momentum. Get it funny so that the bloggers pick up on it.
You can see what I mean by about 2.00 in the youtube when every second word is "smurf". Happy smurf-day.....

The possessed time travelling washing machine was all about this. Every answer was funny. It was a full time job for the poor bloke, but he did get his 5 seconds of fame and was on the post news shows and had massive interest in what was essentially a somewhat broken washing machine.

The next thing I would be doing is taking some way better photos. With 63 smurfs you could get some great set up shots, without even having to get photoshop involved. Print out a few great inappropriate backgrounds with images thieved from google images, abit of soft focus on the background to create a sense of depth and boo-yah, funny photos of small sets of smurfs to go along with your answers. People would be asking for photos next. You could then list these as separate auctions.

The other thing I would do is start the thing off at $1 reserve. Take the risk. Get some momentum going by posting links on your facebook and twitter and hope that a blogger picks up on it. Get some mates to start asking random questions and start the bidding momentum off.

There, just gave away what I think is a great idea. Go nuts if you want to sell of your smurf collection. Perfect platform for creating a trademe sensation.

For those that are interested, here is the official smurf website, with some really interesting historical stuff on it all!
< http://www.smurf.com/smurf.php/www/facts/en > (copy and paste the link people)