Why Didn't I Win Although Stampauctionnetwork Said I Have Won?

In the recent Schuyler Rumsey auction at WESTPEX, I used SAN to bid on several lots. For one of the lot, when the lot opened on the SAN live bidding platform, SAN had me as the top bidder. Going, going, last call... and I was the winner (or so I thought). Under "My bids", the result for the lot was in green, not red! I double-checked the auction results log - yes, Lot xxxx SOLD... Book/NET Paddle (my ID) for $ xxx. Great!

I just received the invoice, and I did not win the lot. I asked, and was told that the auction house had received a prior bid (same amount as my max bid) on the book, and so the lot was awarded to this earlier bid.

I don't understand. If this was indeed the case, then why did SAN show that I was winning when the lot opened, and why did SAN show that I had won the lot, when none of it was true? If I knew I was losing, I would have increased my bid ...

Did anyone ever experience this? Or is this a common occurrence when using SAN? I apologise if this is because of my lack of understanding of how SAN works.

Thanks in advance.

I remember a similar thread one or two years ago.

And it looks like it was not the first time.

http://goscf.com/t/51570

Did you place an advance (book) bid, or were you bidding live? Or did you bid using the unattended live option?

It sounds like you placed an advance bid. If so, it was most likely human error in recording books bids right before the sale. If the lot was called, and there was no floor bidding, the auction house was technically within its terms and conditions to determine the book bid winner. The house can also reopen lots where there was no floor bidding later in the sale.



Did you ask Rumsey or SAN?

Yes, I placed an advanced bid. I was at the live bidding too, and really thought I had won. In any case, it does seem likely human error.




I asked Rumsey - Allan was real nice!

If you submitted your bid as $XXX, BREAK TIE it would be in you hands now.

I think this is the key point, since you did not place a "live" bid Rumsey was just determining the priority of its book bids. In my opinion it is always dangerous to be bidding two ways (live and book / book and agent / agent and live).

A more complicated issue is when someone gives their bid to an agent and then watches the live bidding to jump-in if the agent bid is topped. Sometimes the agent has more than one bid on the lot (say 700 and 800) and auctioneer will call sold for say $500 and the agent will then bump the hammer price to, $750 (one bid increment over the $700 underbid). If the bidder with the $700 is watching live, he or she will think they were winning the lot at $500 and not jump-in and the lot will be hammered to someone else at $750.

The first bid received by the auction house should prevail if two people are bidding the same price .

With SAN's sometimes my first click doesn't register ,not sure if it is my computer or other bids have already increase the price .

Something similar happened to me a few years ago and I think it's from the overlap of different platforms. I had prebid on a stamp that had 0 bids a few days before the auction ended. This auction turned live and a 'floor bidder' bid the same as me and walked away with it. The auctioneer just said those things happen and they can't do anything about it. I have no doubt that my bid was submitted first but the system picked someone else.

I think you mean, The house can also reopen lots where there was no floor Internet bidding later in the sale.
The winning Internet bidder may have walked away from the keyboard and the auction house wouldn't want to re-open and steal it away from the winner with a new floor bid. I guess same could be true for a phone bidder. Maybe to cover all the bases the rule is The house can also reopen lots where there were no bids other than book bids. Anyway, sorry to nitpick, the original quote didn't sound right.



Yes, very annoying. Sometimes it catches up and takes in two bids from me which at least once I had to retract. I think it is the web site or the browser or something not registering the clicks. There is something on the screen about "click here to change to a slower refresh rate if the buttons are hard to press". I haven't tried to use that to see if it helps but maybe I should if it happens more often.

I guess I should have said no live bidding (floor or internet).

I had a similar experience maybe 5 years ago. It was also posted on SCF at the time. The upshot for my case was that the operator at the auction house was new and inexperienced with operating SAN during the auction. Apparently, the auction house's trained person was out ill. From my POV (on the www, not listening to the audio, and seeing things that I had never seen during an auction) Iit looked like shenanigans. I said so in my posts, too. After speaking to Tom at SAN and directly with the owner at the auction house, it was all resolved. In the end, my takeaway was that sometimes things APPEAR worse than they really are. Also, things are REALLY busy and hectic during an auction. Bids come from people in the room, on the internet, over the phone, AND there can be limit-bids and break-tie-bids all happening at the same time. We would all like to think that the software can handle it all and that the operators are 'fluent' in the operation. Things happen, though.

Look auctions are run by humans and we humans screw up.When we screw up the hope is it is something that can be worked out, but alas, not always.

There was a name auction firm and at this point I just don't remember who and it really does not matter. I found a lot I wanted or rather it was brought to my attention. So I called a dealer friend at the show and asked if he could agent for me. No problem, he would even collect the lot and send it to me and I could pay him.

I gave my bid to him, he went to the viewing room checked the item and then placed my bid as agent. Hours pass, lot shows sold at a much lower price than my bid. I called to verify it sold to me and had not. In fact I had no bids in the sale.

I call my dealer friend back and ask he follow up. He did. The bid sheet was found and I won the lot and all is good. However for what ever reason the bid sheet was found still in the viewing area, with several other that had not been taken to the auction room for entry and exercise.

Now you know the dealer is a good friend when he was more upset about this that I was before it was straightened out.

As Forrest Gump said, "It happens" in response to the observation, "Whoa, man! You just ran through a big pile of...." Thus a bumper-sticker of the 70's was born (per the movie). For those over the pond, try c'est la vie.

All I can add is that sometimes SAN is not the end all, be all. Raritan and a couple of others have live bidding on SAN and at least one other platform. Add in left internet bids floor bidders and other book bids and it can be a real headscratcher for everyone.

I can attest to that. I have in the past bid myself up and won. I used the SAN auction agent feature thinking I could not make the live auction but was able to watch live. When one of my lots came up, I became confused (frequent happening) and started bidding live thinking that I was bidding against others when in fact I was bidding against myself. Not pretty.

In fairness to myself I always thought that my bidder number would always be the same on the book and live paddle and the House would know as much.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is "SAN"?

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