How Did I End Up Paying Max Bid In Kelleher Weekly Online Sale?

The auction houses that I bid with relist unsold items - not necessarily at the next sale. In a couple of instances, where the unsold lots were mine, I asked the house simply to add them to their charity lots, rather than try again on my behalf.

Nothing "weird" at all for the internet sales. Your bids were handled per the rules (terms of sale). Any bid placed less than the suggested bid gets executed exactly at the amount placed. If bids are over the suggested bid then reductions from your max can occur depending on the amount of the bid and competition providing lower bids over the suggested bids.

I suggest:

1. Read the terms/conditions of sale, in this case for the internet auctions.
2. Understand the terms/conditions
3. If acceptable, bid.
4. If unacceptable, don't bid.

The internet sales are not handled like a public auction with the winner the first at bid or if one bid higher. Read the rules, don't just assume what they are to avoid surprises and circumstances that seem "weird" to you.




Rules are such that the house must reveal book bids when appropriate. If I announce $100 on the floor and the response is, "I have that" I am being told I tied the high book bid but I am not the winning bid as my bid was second. Thus if I wish to win, I must bump it up one increment. If there is no tie when I announce my $100, the reply is $110 if on book or the auctioneer begins to solicit a $110 bid.

The auctioneer's job is to maximize the sale price for the seller, not minimize the sale price for the buyer.

All of the so-called book bids are nothing but wisps of auctioneers whimsy for me now. I have seen enough of the opening bids being published on morning of day of sale, which should I think account for all book bids received, only to have every lot with bid interest pumped up with an announcement of the auctioneer having a greater book bid. So he/she did not have all of those bids in the morning to publish? They all appeared after being found under a desk? It is just crapola to me.

I have worked at auction houses and helped to generate openings. I can tell you that the vast majority of bids come in at the last moment. To verify this statement one only needs to look at the bidding on E-Bay. Many an item was a great deal 10 minutes before closing only realize an amount 20 or 30 times greater.

The BOOK BID is a problem area the bidders need to pay attention to .

There are many times ,were I clean out the other bidders on the floor and on the internet . This leaves me bidding against the book that the auctioneer has . There are two things ,that come into play here ,first does the firm has a real customer bid or is the firm just playing me for a sucker and trying to increase the bidding to improve their bottom line . If the firm knows I will stay in the game and increase my bid then they will trying running it up ,but if they know I will drop out at any up tick then they will back down .

If they are SAN auctions the last moment bids must be phone bids in order to not be published?

But how could they possibly know that? Of course, they could guess, but that is a fool's game. If this is a live auction, the auctioneer is dealing with noise from all corners. I cannot imagine he is guessing what your level of commitment is to a lot. Unless you are in the room and have an obviously twitchy bidding hand. But if you are just one of the SAN online bidders, how could he possibly know? If you have pre-bid, well, then he knows. THAT'S the case against pre-bidding, of course.

I have worked for a number of auction houses. For a house-owned lot, they may well have some minimum price they are willing to accept - call it an unannounced reserve, if you wish - and once they meet that goal, they should be happy to sell it without pressing more. If the auctioneer were to drive up the bidding, and have the sole bidder drop out, then either it would be unsold or the auctioneer might make some excuse about how he lost track of the bidding and re-open the lot. I find that if I am bidding on a re-opened lot, I need to be careful. The cynic in me doesn't know if it was re-opened because there was an honest mix-up, or if I dropped out before the auctioneer expected me to and got caught with his pants down. In such a case, I will lower my max bid. If THAT max then catches the auctioneer by surprise and he ends up re-opening the lot AGAIN, then I know I was being played. At that point, I have to consider my long-term relationship with that auctioneer. That's only happened to me once, decades ago, and it cost the auctioneer my business. Frankly, a smart auctioneer at that point would simply pretend that the lot sold to the 'other guy' at a reduced realization from the original bidding. The upshot is that I do end up losing a lot of re-opened lots (by reducing my max) but I also feel better about myself.

Bear in mind that unsold lots are a pain in the rear. Costs go way up on that stamp - it will take up space in a future catalog and will take up time during the next auction. It happens, but a smart auctioneer will try to avoid it. Unsold consigned lots will most likely simply get returned to the consignor to reduce future costs to the auctioneer, but there are certainly exceptions to that.

Naturally, YMMV on all of this!

Back in the day (I cannot attest to the current world with SAN, etc, bidding) it was all hands on deck on the day of the auction. All spare people were on the phones, and I know we were unable to keep up with the phone flow. I expect today, though, the phone flow is different, but not non-existent. A lot if bids can be taken over the phone between when the morning openings are posted and the hammer falls.

Still, I wouldn't completely throw away your cynicism/skepticism.

It is one thing to be forced to reveal a book bidder's top bid in the case of a tie, and a very different thing to reveal book bidder's top bid when the floor bidder's bid did not tie the book bidder's top bid with the "one more and its yours).

If you are in the room, even if you have a poker face, if the auctioneer is familiar with you, they can make an educated guess as to how high you will go. Same if you are on the phone as the auctioneer will know it is you because you have to prearrange phone bidding. Even internet bidding is not automatically anonymous as the person running the internet bidding may be able to see who is bidding - it may vary depending on what platform is being used, but at a very minimum they know who the winning internet bidders are and the can relay this to the auctioneer (if the auctioneer doesn't recognize the bidder number). Of course this would be after the lot closes, but just knowing a certain bidder is playing, an auctioneer can guess what other lots some bidders are likely to bid on aggressively.

The House knows who it's internet bidders are. They approved the bidder in the first place and assigned a customer number. It is how they can control somebody from "winning" $500,000 in lots that cannot possibly pay. They also know which bidders are approved to pay on credit etc..

They do know exactly who is bidding on the internet, at least on SAN. For example, I have a decent relationship with Golden Oak, and each time I bid on my first item (via SAN) during one of their live sales, the auctioneer always throws me a "Hello Doctor."

"The House knows who it's internet bidders are. They approved the bidder in the first place and assigned a customer number."

Yes, but when paddle number I452 comes up as the winner, do they remember who I452 is in real time or only afterwards when they can match the number with a name? They might remember a few high volume bidders and not the rest.

They know in real time. There is no delay or disconnect.