Before the first issue

This page is a draft placeholder. It is here so the archive is not an empty shelf. It does not describe a sale, a house, or a price.

The public name of the letter is set in one config file, so the templates can be renamed without a rewrite. The working title is the one in the header of this site.

What the letter is for

Once a week, a letter for auctioneers. The sales worth your time. The objects people will remember. And the part most recaps skip: how the lot was photographed, and how the catalog described it.

The readers we have in mind are the people who write the catalog and the people who call the sale. Estate work and antiques, the same rooms Auctus is built for.

What an issue will leave out

An issue names a house, a day, and an object only when we have the catalog and the photographs in front of us. It states a price only when that price is a real result from that sale.

If the photos and the description are missing, the object does not go in the letter. A blank is better than a guess. That is the same rule the cataloging app uses: a fact needs a photo or a voice note behind it, and a price is never estimated.

Where an issue lives

The email is the delivery. The page is the record. Each issue is archived on this website, under the archive. The mailing tool sends the message. It does not host the back issues.

What is on the site today

The other sample is a blank outline of the sections a real issue will use. The sale is unnamed on purpose. When the first real issue is ready, it replaces this kind of draft at the top of the archive, and the draft banner comes off.