Confused About Kelleher Auction

I am a 1st timer to the Kelleher auction and am confused about the process. There is an interesting lot that showed an opening bid of $500 so I placed the bid. Then a few days later it showed an opening bid for $1000 so I placed the $1000 bid. It now shows that I am not the high bidder and there is a new opening bid of $1100. Does opening bid not really mean opening bid and that there is another bidder that has already placed a higher bid or is there a reserve that is yet to be met? To me opening bid means I am the 1st bidder in. This did not happen on a couple of other lots that I placed bids on.
Thanks for the help.
Paul

This is a mystery to me. I did a little experiment myself the other day to test a theory. There is a lot I know that is fairly low priced "open". So I placed a bid on SAN that was $500 over this Open but we'll below suggested bid. And wouldn't you know it, not too long after the new open was then at the start of the suggested bid range. Now there was several days left, there was no previous movement on it, and I would have expected a change of the open price to be 1 increment over my bid. That's the sus part. There was no middle incremental bidding up. I have seen this numerous times, and don't get their opening prices if they are just marketing and don't honor them.

If I bid 1000, and someone enters a max bid of $2000, the price should go up to $1100. No?

Hi Paul - When entering bids on SAN you will see the amount that the lot will open at the moment of actual sale by the auctioneer. Up until that moment every bid that is tendered will change the opening amount that is shown previous to the actual sale. There may be last minute book or left bids that are not reflected in the SAN amount however. If SAN currently shows you the winner at $1000 but you feel that the lot is worth $2000 and you bid that amount and the next lowest bidder is $1500 you will stay "green" at $1600 or whatever the particular auction interval dictates.

i buy there all the time. opening changes to the bid 1 step above their highest bid they have in, following the bid increasements

so opening can be the lowest they will accept and can go up as bids come in

opening 100

you bid auto bid 150

opening stays at 100

but than I put in a bid at 130

opening goes to 140 since your auto bid passes my 130 by step of 10

the steps are on their website

and to answer the other question: I have won several lots quite a bit below my SAN maximum bid with various auction houses......BUT....somehow the German ones always seem to end at, or extremely close to the auto-bid, so I am more careful there now

They need more transparency. IMHO Stamp Collectors don't trust them. Them is not pointed at Kelleher, but stamp auction houses in general.

If they were more transparent I believe they would garner more bids and come out better in the long run. With the current situation many will not even venture into the fray.

This goes for both buying and selling.

After the fiasco I went through last week that resulted in my severing ties with an auction house, I am now firmly of the opinion that one should NEVER leave bids in advance on SAN or any other platform. Only ever bid live during the floor session. If that means you cannot bid because it's a "mail bid sale" with no live floor session, then don't bid unless you trust that particular house implicitly.

When auction houses have access to your maximum bids and can "play with them" after the fact rather than bids being executed in real time and lots hammered down live in public, there's far too many opportunities for shenanigans and unethical behavior... not to mention the complete lack of transparency when it comes to how and when bids are actually executed in the background.

That clears things up. Thanks all for the feedback.

I am not sure what transparency would look like in an auction since protecting bid amounts is integral to the process. ebay type time/date bid info is still data that would be provided by the auction house and that goes full circle back to implicit trust. SAN is not a discreet entity. The Houses input bid amounts through the entire bidding cycle.

As Dan stated, live bidding is the closest to "real" that you can get but you are still relying on honest book bid amounts. There really is no way around the House and potentially being bid up.

It all relies upon trust.

There have been cases where my bid "upped itself" to my max bid where the process seemed less than transparent. There is an auction house I now avoid due to that occurring a little too consistently.

So now I never bid in advance, agree strongly with that approach - with SAN, you can place items on watch without placing any bid - if I can be present online for the live bidding. In the case of non-live online auctions, I assume that I will pay max bid if I win the item and so my bids reflect that.

Unfortunately the term "opening bid" on SAN doesn't mean the bid at which the auction will open. One could choose another word like "minimum bid" or "next bid" but those have problems too. If there is a hidden reserve, the minimum might be a higher number. Since bids are often taken from multiple platforms "next" might not really be the next bid either.

People here have already talked about problems with entering a max bid - not trusting the auction house etc. But even when the auction house is trustworthy there is a phenomenon that happens with bids placed in advance. The auctioneer will quickly over-bid any live bid with "book bids" and when the live bid reaches the max bid left, the auctioneer will say "prior bid" (meaning even though you bid X, you aren't winning because there was a prior bid of that same amount.) That leaks information. It tells you immediately that you have now reached the high bid left. If you just wanted to drive the price up, you will stop bidding and force the pre-bidder to his/her max bid. If you want the stamp, you now know you only need one more bid to take it.

So, as others have said, bidding live is the best way to go. If you can't make it at the live auction time, an agent who can bid live for you is next best option.

So the activity I saw was this at Kelleher on today's auction-
Stamp suggested bid $2,000-2,500.
Open bid $1000

I knew this was a stamp I wanted to buy. I missed a similar issue at the last auction, and now this one was an even better version! The last one went for $2300
So I put in a bid on SAN at 1200 several days ago, more as a placeholder (knowing that it was going to go for over $2500) so I wouldn't forget. I am also only doing bidding live with them, because of a scenario I ran into with the previous auction, where my max bid was pushed to the high of the suggested bid range, with seemingly no competition. So I didn't go the live bid route.

Within a short time, maybe a few hours of me putting this bid in, the open bid was upped to $2000. Because this was several days ago, this now becomes highly suspect, the main one being this uptick would imply 2 unique bidders. Now it doesn't seem like a lot, but why 4 days before the auction did 2 other bidders suddenly bid it up to $2000 right after I bid $1200, and why? I just don't believe I missed the $1300 uptick nor do I think I missed the $1900. I have a browser tab of open bids that I like to refresh. I don't believe I just ran into heated bidding wars this many days early. Coincidences aren't my thing.

Now my real theory:
$2000 was the real open price or a silent reserve of some sort that just isn't known. The Scott cat value is $4750.
$1000 was the teaser price, to get you to think you can score a rarity on the cheap as a marketing ploy
Insert 2 other bidders on this same random Monday. The Book (aka the house) is willing to own it for $2k. This is their high watermark comfort level for taking possession. They know they can extract more value out of it, if it truly ends there which it was all but guaranteed not to. Again they saw the inferior block go for more last go 'round. The auction opens, there is some buzz. $2000,21,22,23,24,25. I win 2600. I'm thrilled.

It doesn't truly matter, because if there were real folks bidding in the 2000's they arrived, but the fact is, I am not convinced they were there days prior in any realistic form, aside from the book pushing it closer to fair market value.

Am I a conspiracy nut? Sorry I just have trust issues with anything "dealers" associated.

To me bidding on SAN prior to the live bidding is just sending in a mail bid out in the open more or less. The minute you enter a value you have tipped your hand. Entering a bid on SAN shows other people sitting on the sidelines that there is interest. Some bidders treat SAN like ebay as well and as soon as they see somebody else bump up an opening they jump in and bid again. It is crazy, it inflates bids and it really defeats the purpose of a live auction. No two ways about it. If you cannot bid live then use Absentee Agent bidding for a 1% fee. That way you do not create a visible bid on SAN before the auction and the House does not know either what your max is or even that you are interested.

Oh, and another thing. I have had auctioneers tell the room that they needed one more bump to "clear the book" which happened to be MY bid and that really well and truly ticked me off. Argh

Two words: "Auction Agent" solves many of the issues including special conspiracy ideas.

As to public auctions, bids come many ways today, Mail or directly calling in the bids to the auction house prior to the sale date/time and such become to so called "book bids" that auctioneer carries to the floor. These book bids are the bids than can change anytime before the auction date/time and produce an "opening bid" which is valid at only that moment if the lot sale began then. They, the opening bids, are fluid until the sale of the lot begins. Likewise there are reasons book bids can change or be dropped altogether, limits or 'or bids', incorrect recording, bidder changing mind and auction company agreeing with it and so the list continues.

At the sale, you can have telephone bidders, internet bidders, standing on the floor bidders and auction agents participating one of those three ways, with a great preference to be on the floor. Now when you see a lot jump up many bids suddenly during the live auction meaning the $100 open is suddenly $1200 you can have an agent with more than one client bidding on the lot and between those clients the highest bid for the moment is $1200.

Now unlike ebay or similar auctions which end at a set time and it is sold to the then highest bidder over the second highest (one increment) live auctions only stop when the bidding stops.

Now let me be clear, I am discussing the public auctions of Kellerher (or other firms). If bidding in a Kelleher Company internet only auction, the rules and handling of bids are different. One needs to read those rules to understand how bidding works there as it is different. I am not saying they are bad or good rules, only they are different--READ THEM, because they are different.

Last observation regarding auction agents, when they are on the floor, they know what won the lot, an agent, a floor bidder, internet bidder, telephone bidder or 'the book' and can tell you so after the auction.

All this talk reminds me about a famous auction house here in Australia that had a habit of managing to sell lots at your highest bid and never, ever lower..........

Funny how I haven't bid in any auctions with them in the past twenty years.

All these games even happen at the big stamp club in Melbourne. Dealers source a lot of their material at these auctions.

Very often they will get together to discuss which lots they will bid on, how much they will bid, and which lots they WILL NOT bid each other up on.

Even collectors do the same thing at the auctions.