Delcampe Changes - Anonymous Transactions And Anti-Sniping Bidding Extensions

So, if an auction is extended a minute and a last-minute bid follows, does the auction get extended another minute? Even if not done, 120 lots extended one minute is a two hour delay minimum for following lots. Best to sit in a potty chair and have Red Bull and snacks at hand if you have several bids throughout one sale.

The late George Bennett used to call auctions for several houses in Southern California and so knew a lot of bidders and collectors in general. He would occasionally wake up dozing bidders asking "____, isn't this something you should be bidding on?" This was resented by Sleepy Guy's competitors. Do you count this situation as collusion or not? It is helping out the auction house that he's working for.

In my experience does not work like that.
Your bid of $5 gets beaten, you have 1 minute to rebid,
You rebid (I don't, my bid is always my best bid) but say you rebid $7
You get a message "sorry your bid is below the current level"
You then have 30 seconds, say to rebid higher.
If you muck around the 1 minute elapses.

I recall that experience when bidding on really scarce Romania Proofs,
some years ago.
Started at $5
My limit was $120
Bids came in in the last minute, and went to the stratosphere
took around 10 minutes and was hard closed around $600 if memory serves.

Now that customer service. Perhaps rather than placing book bids, the customer's bidding instruction were to, "wake me up for the following lots..."

Rasdale Stamp Auctions has the soft -close system with the computer bidding . It takes a little time to get use to it . But once you start using it ,it works fine .

It really doesn't slow things down as you would think .

I remember the late 1980's and early 1990's of going to New Jersey for the Gregg Manning Stamp Auctions . It took time to learn how all the New York dealers and all the overseas dealers acted and the different ways a huge amount of bidders were bidding ,their is clearly a different culture and dynamics of each auction and the learning curve for each one of us is different .

I have included a link to a research paper on online bidding specific to sniping, below this key takeaway from that paper:




https://www.nber.org/system/files/w...2/w20942.pdf

In my opinion ebay has researched this issue far more than anyone else and has concluded that the best (most profitable for them) approach is the way they are doing it now. I would assume that others, like Delcampe, might find alternative approaches attractive only because it is a marketplace differentiator from the 800 pound gorilla that ebay is to them.
Don

I treat ebay auctions like any other where the wining bid is one advance over the second highest bid. I bid my max as close to the end time as I can. I have a lot of experience coming end second highest bidder with this approach but I am not bitter about losing a lot to someone else who desires the item more.

Amen!

I buy a fair amount of stuff on Delcampe — mostly postal cards, picture postcards, and phonecards — and I have no objection to these changes. People seldom bid against me on the things I want on Delcampe anyway. Certainly I've been outbid, but it happens to me far less frequently on Delcampe than it does on ebay.

"The late George Bennett used to call auctions for several houses in Southern California and so knew a lot of bidders and collectors in general. He would occasionally wake up dozing bidders asking "____, isn't this something you should be bidding on?" This was resented by Sleepy Guy's competitors. Do you count this situation as collusion or not? "

No, this is called the auctioneer doing his job.

"So, if an auction is extended a minute and a last-minute bid follows, does the auction get extended another minute? Even if not done, 120 lots extended one minute is a two hour delay minimum for following lots. Best to sit in a potty chair and have Red Bull and snacks at hand if you have several bids throughout one sale."

While there is no set 1 minute time, this is how all live auctions work. There is no sniping at a live auction, the auctioneer will always wait after the last bid. In fact some internet bidders get shut out because they wait too long trying to guess when the auctioneer will close the lot (hard to do when you are not in the room).

When I sell things on ebay, I'm usually disappointed by the lack of sniping. "Come on, there are half-a-dozen of you watching, start pressing those 'bid now' buttons in the last ten seconds! No, it's gone for 99p after all".

sniping the snipers------ Most snipers are throwing in a one or two tick higher bid . I throw in a six tick higher which gives me a 50 to 75% chance of getting the item .

In the past few months there has been a serious drop-off of buying better material on E-bay, not sure of the reason for this , asking around to a few ebay sellers at the stamp club ,they say the better items are a slow sale but the low /cheap stuff is still selling .

Yes, that's why my stuff always goes!