GAINESVILLE, Ga. -

Many in the industry use Black Book’s “Beggs on the Used Car Market” weekly videos as a way to stay on top of auction price movement and trends in the lanes.

This week, Black Book editorial director and senior vice president Ricky Beggs took a different approach for the series.

He sat down with this year’s leadership of the National Auto Auction Association to get their insight into the market and learn about their plans to support the wholesale market channels.

Beggs met with Jack Neshe, president of NAAA, and Ellie Johnson, president-elect of NAAA, to get a feel for what’s on the association’s radar for 2014.

After congratulating Neshe on his new role as president, Beggs delved right in, asking the executive what’s in the pipeline as he “drives the NAAA ship” this year.

Neshe explained that the association will be reaching out to member auctions in 2014, especially those that may not have been recognized in years past.

“We visited 65 auctions last year, and we got quite a bit of input. It was nice to talk to the general managers and recieve feedback of what they were experiencing in the market. One of the things moving forward is we want to continue visiting auctions, and we want to concentrate on a lot of auctions that have never got a visit from NAAA,” said Neshe.

“We have a lot of member auctions that have never seen anybody from NAAA, and they have always supported us. Those are the auctions we are going to concentrate on this year,” he added.

Beggs also touched on how used inventory levels are approaching pre-recession rates, asking Neshe how improving conditions are affecting the auction industry.

“Its an exciting time; I think we all learned some lessons on how to run the auction and how to run the lanes, and I think it is something we won’t take for granted,” said Neshe.

“The feedback we got from this year it that auctions were seeing the volumes come back, and they were seeing the conversions come back, but I don’t think we saw that initial spring spike we saw back during pre-recession years. I think it has been a more steady rise in volume and values,” he continued.

As for what’s in store for 2014, Neshe said, “I think the values will remain strong and hopefully the conversion will remain consistent.”

For more from Begg’s annual NAAA interview and predictions for the new year, see the video above.