But that's not the worry of Adesa, the Indianapolis auction company that owns the lot.
While many might deride some of the decisions she made at the helm of eBay during her later years there, few can argue that Whitman created real value at the web auction company.
"A lot of people are still under the impression that distressed assets are what auctions are most appropriate for, and that's not true, " said Stacy Kirk Reich, president of Grand Estates Auction Company, which oversaw the sale of the property.
In a Dutch auction, a company reveals the maximum amount of shares being sold and sometimes a potential price for those shares.
And for young and growing companies, an auction allows the company to raise as much cash as the market is willing to afford it.
Refco's creditors are hoping the judge assigned to handle the firm's bankruptcy filing will order a speedy auction of the company to be conducted when parties meet on Monday morning in lower Manhattan.
Since July this year, Art Auction Guarantee, a company founded in 2011, have offered buyers of art at auction a guarantee that, for a percentage of the acquisition price (5% to 7.5%), they will get back what they paid for the piece if it is resold at auction after two years or more and fails to make the reserve price.
However, the new real time advertising auction system that the company is bringing out might well change some part of that.
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The video retailer has filed a motion in U.S. bankruptcy court in New York asking the court to conduct an auction process for the company.
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The remainder of the investment charge was related to holdings the company had in auction-rate securities.
One of the lawsuits is against Copy USA -- to date, Microsoft has shut down 600 postings on the New York company's auction site.
Last December, in a transaction surreal even by Russian standards, Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos's main production arm, was forcibly sold in another rigged auction, to a front company registered at a provincial grocery shop.
When the Tribune Company management begrudgingly put the company on the auction block at the behest of the Chandler family, they said they would not consider bids for individual parts of the company.
"The Games touched people in such a unique way, they really want a piece of that, " Jon Curleigh, Director at Vancouver-based Innovative Sports Limited, the sports marketing company operating the auction, told NBC News.
The company employs about 250 auction specialists, curators and appraisers to guarantee authenticity of items up for bid.
Under Korean law, any auction of a state-owned company's assets must attract at least two bidders before it can proceed.
Under the law in South Korea, any auction of a state-owned company's assets must attract at least two bidders before the sale can go forward.
Hostess was ready to auction off the brands, but the company notified bankruptcy court today that the Apollo-Metropoulos group was the only qualified bid.
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One of these is the way in which auction houses use third-party guarantees, where an outside individual or company agrees in advance to pay a set amount for a work sold at auction, in return for a cut of proceeds if the consignment sells for more than that.
Superior information has kept the company's gross return on auction sales close to 9% for the past seven years.
But if the initial market demand is not there, a company putting its faith in the auction could miss out on the support of a traditional offering.
Clearly the company is moving away from the auction format and is concentrating on retailers using eBay to sell merchandise at regular prices which is the approach many consumers prefer.
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After the case was thrown out and the auction proceeded, Tekt tried to appeal, to no avail: In a curious decision the judge ruled that the company could not do so because it had not qualified to participate in the auction.
But the bidder that's really shaking up the auction is none other than Google, the search engine company and Internet-advertising giant.
The company said this improvement is principally due to higher auction commission revenues resulting from a 23 percent increase in net auction sales, partially offset by a decline in auction commission margin from 17.2 percent to 16.4 percent, attributable to the sales mix.
At one of my first gigs out of college, at an auction house in New York City, the owner of the company never wanted to bring the female employees on work errands alone in his car, and thus brought the only male employee every time.
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Dissatisfied investors in the Tribune Company have forced the corporation to put itself on the auction block.
The Internet-based auction site purchased two online classifieds businesses and the online payment services company Bill Me Later.
The Fur Auction got its start in 1670 as the Hudson's Bay Company, which bought furs from trappers and shipped them to London.
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