What Duplicate Lot Numbers Cost You on Ring Day
A live auction with a duplicate lot number surfaces about 90 minutes into the sale, when the ringman calls a number that has already been knocked down and the clerk is looking at two open bid sheets for the same lot. The buyer who won the first pass thinks they bought the Victorian whatnot stand. The bidder who won the second pass thinks they bought the same piece. You are now in a dispute about which sale stands, and the consignor is watching.
This is not a hypothetical. It is a clock-management and data-entry failure that this template is specifically built to prevent. The Lot # field enforces uniqueness; the Seller # field ties each lot back to its consignor's account in the AuctionFlex register. If you cannot answer "whose lot is this and what number is it" without cross-checking a separate list, the floor management is going to cost you time you do not have when the room is full.
The Three Pricing Fields and What Each One Does
Starting Price, Reserve Price, and Lead Price carry three operationally distinct numbers.
The Starting Price is the floor the auctioneer opens at. It anchors the room's first bid and signals item quality — an auctioneer who opens too high kills momentum, too low creates a bidding war that occasionally goes well but more often produces a sale below consignor expectations. The starting price in the record is the agreed figure from the pre-auction consultation, not an improvisation on the day.
Reserve Price is the consignor's floor. Below this number, the lot does not sell. The consignor on a quality Colt Walker replica in the Firearms & Weapons category set their reserve at $1,800 at intake. If the room stalls at $1,400 and the auctioneer has to "pass" the lot, that reserve is in the record. When the consignor asks why their piece did not sell, you pull the record and show them the bidding history and the reserve they set.
The Lead field is 50 characters maximum — the catalog headline. This is not the description; it is the one-line summary that prints in the auction catalog and appears in the AuctionFlex lot listing. "Victorian walnut credenza, circa 1885, original brass hardware" is a Lead. The full provenance, condition report, and measurements go in Description. This field discipline matters when you are exporting directly to the AuctionFlex system: the lead populates the catalog header and the description feeds the lot detail page. If someone puts four paragraphs in the Lead field, the catalog breaks.
The Category System and Why It Drives Search Traffic
The template carries 20+ category fields: Antiques & Collectibles, Art, Boats, Books, Business & Industrial, Cars & Trucks, Coins & Paper Money, Computers & Networking, Consumer Electronics, Estate & Personal Property, Farm & Ranch, Firearms & Weapons, Heavy Equipment, Jewelry & Watches, Motorcycles, Musical Instruments, Pottery & Glass, Real Estate, Sporting Goods, Sports Cards & Memorabilia, Stamps, Toys & Hobbies. This is not for internal sorting — it is for the AuctionFlex online marketplace categories that bidders use when filtering absentee bidding.
A bidder who filters for Firearms & Weapons on a regional auction platform wants to see your Colt Walker replica. If it is not categorised, they do not find it. The lot goes to room-only bidding when it should have attracted three or four absentee phone bids from collectors who never left home.
The ten photo fields per lot are the other half of the same problem. An online bidder on Estate & Personal Property will not bid on a lot with one photograph of the front of a dresser at bad angle from six feet away. They need the dovetail joint detail, the back panel, the interior drawer slide condition, the maker's stamp if there is one. Ten images per lot allows for a thorough visual record that converts an online browse into a committed absentee bid.
The record that is filled in completely — lead, description, starting price, reserve, category, ten photos — goes out to the internet and brings bidders into the room who would otherwise never have known the sale existed.