After multiple mental breakdowns and weeks of starting from scratch, I am happy to announce that we now have auctions on the Tortuga Estate website!
I completely underestimated the amount of work it would take for someone with zero coding experience to recreate something even remotely similar to eBay’s auction system. Keeping that in mind, let’s hope I did my job well enough and that we will not have any issues with the first auction.
The design is still far from perfect, but I will keep improving it as we go.
There are a few important details I need to explain:
Unfortunately, the auctions have to run in only one currency, and that currency has to be euros (€). There was simply no clean way around this.
I did my best to make things easier for non-EU customers, especially customers from the US, by adding live conversion estimates. Still, please keep in mind that the current bid itself is shown in euros and includes German VAT.
To make things clearer, I also managed to add a couple of useful rows underneath the bid buttons. When you enter your bid, they show an estimate of what that bid would mean tax-free and approximately in US dollars.
Whenever you open an auction page, the currency switcher will automatically switch to euros. But it remembers your previous selection, so when you go back to the regular shop, you should see the prices in your selected currency again.
Other than that, the auction itself should work much like eBay: you enter your maximum bid, and the system bids for you automatically up to that amount.
Please also remember to check your spam folder for auction-related emails, especially if you are bidding, have been outbid, or have won an auction.
For now, I will only list the most special items as auctions, starting with The Peterson Pipe Book, and possibly a Sherlock Holmes rack in the next day or two.
Happy bidding and good luck!
P.S. Please make sure to pay for any item you win, and contact me immediately if there are any issues.
