Update, March 26th: user-to-user auctions are now live.
Update: Well, an Oopsie from me. Seems the user-to-user Mainland auctions aren’t *quite* live, but still in a testing phase. As such, this article has been revised.
In July 2018, Linden Lab overhauled the Mainland auction system – see Second Life land auctions get a face-lift and the official blog post A Face lift for Auctions.
The “new” auction system leverages Second Life Place Pages as the medium for presenting land for auction and for placing bids, together with a new “cover page” listing available parcels up for auction. which can be found at https://places.secondlife.com/auctions. At the time the system launched, it was restricted to land being auctioned by Linden Lab, with the promise (at that time) that Mainland land holders would be able to start adding their own parcels “soon”.
“Soon” took a step closer to becoming an reality on Tuesday, February 26th, when a new Knowledge Base article appeared, entitled Creating Your Own Auctions. It is designed to walk Mainland land holders through how to set a parcel for auction. According to Alexa Linden, who contacted me on the matter, the system is still in testing, but will likely be ready t go in the very near future.
The Knowledge Base article outlines a number of requirements for those wishing to auction their Mainland parcels:
- The parcel must be owned by an individual resident; group owned parcels cannot be auctioned.
- Auctions can only be created by the parcel owner, and the owner must have a verified email address.
- Parcels for auction must be set for auction via their associated Place Page.
- There is a 15% commission payable to Linden Lab on all successfully concluded auctions.
- When you create the auction, the ownership of the parcel is transferred to a temporary holding account named AuctionServices Linden.
- You will no longer be listed as the owner and will not be able to edit, cut, sell, or change the parcel in any way once you create the auction.
- If you cancel the auction, or if the auction completes without any bids, then the ownership of the parcel returns to you.
- Note: it is not clear what happens to any payable tier during this time, but I presume it remains payable until such time as the auction concludes.
If you are not familiar with Place Pages, you can find out about them via my Place Pages tutorial. This will be updated to include the relevant information on setting a parcel for auction in the near future, once the service has been confirmed as being “live”. In the meantime, additional details on Mainland auctions can be found in the Second Life Knowledge base as follows:
Again, and for clarity, do please remember, the auction system is for Mainland only. Private regions or parcels cannot be offered through it.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 