In the Auction Catalog under "Conducting the Auction # 14 it states " In the event of any dispute between any bidders at an Auction, Auctioneer may at his sole discretion reoffer the lot. Auctioneer's decision and declaration of the winning Bidder shall be final and binding upon all bidders "

So Heritage can reoffer the lots if they want or declare the winners as final.

They already declared Powell the winner, then retracted that decision. I'm sure that authority is not addressed in their rules.

That's the problem, the software stated he " won " when he really "lost".

Aaron,

Respectfully, I did bid in extended time. My bid was accepted and I waited the full 30 minutes. I checked my account and it said I won (I lost my other bids and they were correctly identified as losers). Saturday morning I looked up my account and the set was listed as winner. I learned otherwise from this board later in the morning. The set lot ended with me as the winner, reported me as the winner and no one including me could bid on the set after I won. I’m optimistic Heritage will do the right thing. It’s not your fault and I don’t blame you. I am a processional trial lawyer and I would never let my clients get screwed by making a deal and having the rug pulled out from under them. I have had great relations with Heritage so I’m confident it won’t end up in Court but no fair minded person could say that I didn’t win the set fair and square.

If the intent was to run the set against the individual lots, it seems obvious that has to assume a comparison at the same time. Heritage should have foreseen that the normal closing rules could not accomplish that, and should apologize to winners of the individual lots and award the set to Powell.

Here is an analogy - the eagles are playing the Lions (Baker v Cobb). The rules state that whoever has the most points at the end of 60 minutes, wins. When the clock expires after 60 minutes, the Lions are winning 30-20. But then, for some reason, the eagles are given the chance to keep playing until either they score more than 30 points or give up; all the while, the lions are stuck in the locker room and not able to defend their victory. While I am sure there are eagles fans who would declare this legit, my gut is all other NFL fans would declare the lions the proper victor.

The way it probably should have worked, off the top of my head, is the set should have remained open until all the single lots closed, and Powell then should have had an opportunity to top the total.

But that would put Aaron in Powells current position. Aaron would have gone to bed winning the single lot and not being able to bid higher, woken up the next morning and see that he lost the lot, assuming Powell went higher on the set.

It has to end sometime. I agree no way is perfect but I think mine achieves the intent of the auction. And bidders on single lots are on notice they might lose out to the set.

Of course, which is why all the lots should have stayed open until none received a bid for 30 mins.

The singles and set have to be linked and run at the same time and all end after no bids after 30 minutes on any singles or the set. The software was not set up for that format, this scenario should have been anticipated by the AH and made adjustments.

So if you're King Solomon what do you now do about it?

+1. Was it clear in the rules that if and when the total set lot closed the individual lots did as well? If not, seems to me that most of the unfairness that Powell experienced could be claimed by the individual lot bidders too-- I think it was noted that the reverse situation could have occurred.

Frankly, the way it played out I'm not sure I understand what Powell could have done even if his clock stayed open on the entire set. Do we know for certain that once the aggregate bids for the individual cards exceeded his set price he would have been free to increase his bid even if his lot had remained open? Did the software have an internal "scoreboard" that would have allowed Powell to basically bid against himself on that one lot? After all, no one had outbid him on that specific lot, so do we know that he could have increased his bid at any time? Just askin.

Award the set to Powell since he was the high bidder at the time Heritage closed the lot, they should have closed the singles at that point but the software didn't allow that. No matter which way Heritage goes it will be unfair to someone, in this case Aaron who did nothing wrong and played by the rules. Maybe Powell can work out a deal with Aaron for his extra BG Jackson or Herzog if he is awarded the set.

In think the only fair thing to all is a rebid from the close and it only stops when no bids on ANY lots for 30 minutes. Powell should never have been the winner when it said so, and to declare so would now be unfair to the individual lot bidders.

I think we are not considering all the other individual lot winners who may be totally unaware of the situation if they are not on Net54. So they go to bed thinking they won, get their invoice, pay it...and then Heritage says "you didn't win, here's your money back". Powell can't make a deal with all those bidders as well.

And, no, I don't know the answer either. But my guess is that Heritage will let the results stand as they played out (and compensate Powell in some way).

Powell, I feel terrible for you. After this, I hope you never have to deal wi Heritage again.

No doubt, the other bidders would essentially now be in Powells position, not fair to them but neither is locking Powell out from going higher. The third option would be to re-run the auction. Any way they go is going to be unfair to someone.

How do you compensate Powell for what it would have meant to him to own and display the set?

I’m so sorry Powell....I hope you never deal with Heritage again. So messed up.

I don't know. I don't know the solution. Maybe compensate is the wrong word.

But if they award the set to Powell, what do they tell the person that thinks they won the Cobb and wants to display it with their Ty Cobb collection.

Just to be clear, I feel terrible for Powell. I am just saying that awarding the set to Powell raises issues with all the individual lot "winners".

Oh for sure, it's a no win situation now.

No good solutions. Heritage may need to pay big money to someone to make everyone happy.

First, I’m glad to sell my Jackson and Herzog to help out Heritage and the other bidders even though I was not planning to do so.

Second, I don’t believe there should be a redo as the set was sold to me. At worst, I should have to pay $1 more than the high bids on the individual lots. Otherwise, the true motivation for the last individual bids was to beat me out of the set after the fact. Even though the auction should have been over for the BG’s when the clock ran out on the set, under no circumstances should individual lots that were closed be re-opened.

So what do people think Heritage will do here? Purely a guess, but I think they will let things stand, and hope they can make it up somehow with Powell.

Have they ready shipped some or all of the cards out to the winners of the individual lots? If so, then it’s hard to imagine rolling anything back.

If they haven’t shipped anything yet, then there’s a chance they could make a change, either to award the lot to Powell, or declare that their software was insufficient for the assigned task and therefore the auction needs to be re-completed using a system that allows all bidders an equal opportunity of winning under this somewhat exciting yet potentially very complicated format.

I doubt they have shipped yet, but once they do definitely becomes impractical or impossible to undo.

Yep.

I don't see how they can just decide to sell the set to Powell since their software allowed the bidding to continue. I think they will have to leave the results as is. Trying to reopen bidding for the lots related to the set seems like it would be challenging and probably wouldn't make anyone happy except maybe the consigner.

As Jeff alluded to, the problem is that the auction software can’t handle this type of bidding. The individual lot totals have to be linked to the aggregate lot so when their total exceeds the aggregate the aggregate needs to be shown as open with the next bid topping the sum of the individual bids. That is the easy part. The hard part is what to do with individual bids when the aggregate exceeds the sum of the individual bids. For example, let’s say that at a point in the auction the aggregate is at $600k and the sum of the individual lots was at $500k. If I only wanted to win one individual lot would the auction software have to keep bumping my bids till I increased the bid on that individual lot by over $100k?
I think my conclusion is that conceptually this type of auction sounds nice, but practically there is no easy way to handle the bidding.
I think this is an unfortunate situation for all involved and that the only fair solution is to reauction the group. Also, if there is a right answer to how to handle this situation that answer must be independent of how much or how little business any of the involved parties has done with HA.

That same software that allowed bidding to continue also locked Powell out from going higher once the individual lots surpassed his high bid. I feel bad for Powell, Aaron, and the rest of the bidders as they did nothing wrong and followed the AH rules. For the amount of money these guys are spending the process should have been vetted better and this exact scenario addressed. I'm not sure there will be any winners as this plays out, which is unfortunate.

But the software didn’t allow the bidding to continue for me, it said I won. I’m open to a reasonable solution as I stated earlier. I don’t want to take this further but won’t be steamrolled either.

I don't know if that means you are considering the possibility of a lawsuit, but as you know it's going to be very difficult if not impossible to get specific performance once the cards are shipped out around the country.

I think the software said you won because it can’t see the linkage between the individual and the aggregate lots. My guess is that even if there was a separate page added to the auction that showed the total of the individual lots as compared to the aggregate lot, the software wouldn’t let an aggregate lot bidder bump his own bids to catch up if he was behind. I had the reverse situation once where I was an individual lot bidder and the sum of the individual lots was just short of the aggregate. I wanted to bid but I was not allowed by the software to top myself. I had to call the auction house, explain the situation, and have them enter “house” bids against me so I could continue to bid and eventually throw the individual total above the aggregate bid.

That's what I was thinking. If the aggregate got outbid by the set bidder, and then several aggregate bidders bumped up their respective Max bids to beat the set bid, how would that be calculated?

Let's say the aggregate bid is $500k and the set bid is $520k. Several bidders of individual cards bump their Max bids by $10k, $17k, $14k, 19K, $12k... Does Heritage just bump all those bids to their max, or does there need to be a pro-rated calculation so that the new aggregate beats the set bid only by the required amount? Meaning, those individual bids don't go all the way to their max.

The simplest to do this, especially considering the logic in Heritage's programming, is this: Make it a 2-day close. The first day, all the individual lots close, with the caveat that a Set bid the following day may negate the results. This would encourage bidders to place hard bids higher than just what would be needed to be the top bidder on their lot. The second day, the minimum bid would be the aggregate plus whatever percentage it would need to be beaten by.

I would think that the cards would not be shipped before tomorrow at earliest so that should not be an issue.
The only fair thing to do is reauction the cards. The question then is whether the bidding will be limited to the initial bidders or completely open. I ask because I could see the possibility of new bidders entering the fray.

I would be shocked if Heritage goes that route with a completed auction of this magnitude.

Apparently Mile High has run auctions like this. Does anyone know how they manage to avoid problems like this?

I don’t see HA changing the current result if they don’t do this.

Yep. I think that's exactly what they will do, keep the result.

Every solution is unsatisfying, but the most logical would be to determine that the bid for the complete set is the winner because it exceeded the individual lots when it closed, and the individual bids that came in later are nullities.

Granted, I'm wearing my consumer hat rather than my lawyer hat, but that's the only reasonable way to interpret auction rules that don't provide any sort of disclaimer about staggered individual-lot closings after bidding on the complete set is locked.

Mile High (and Mastro/Legendary back in the day) avoided this issue because all lots closed at once, not individually, and all lots showed which total was winning (set or individuals).

I'm sure Heritage has a disclaimer that covers any possible scenario and they have full authority to settle it in any manner they see fit.

I think they will leave it as is and sell to the individual bidders.

May not seem fair but it nets the consignor the most money and that is their #1 priority.

I believe they don't have individual lot closings or didn't years ago when I bid on an auction of this type. Years ago I bid on some m101-5 cards that were being auctioned in this manner by Mile High. Late in the game the complete set lot was higher, and there was zero I could do about it because I couldn't raise my own high bids on the dozen or so cards I wanted. I had to hope that other cards were being bid that would jump the total or that someone would outbid me so I could increase my bids. That's why I asked in this thread how clearly the rules were spelled out. I wasn't as resourceful as Jay, who said he called the Auction House to basically force an increase in his bids.

Does Mile High allow you to increase your own bid, if necessary, to change which outcome is ahead (set vs individual lots) or do you have to contact them so they can adjust the bid?

Does Mile High allow you to increase your own bid, if necessary, to change which outcome is ahead (set vs individual lots) or do you have to contact them so they can adjust the bid?

It also pisses off only one person, albeit of course one who is important to them.

We don’t know who won the individual lots. That said, as I said before, the right answer should be independent of the picket depth of the parties involved.

Peter, I disagree. Doing this will presumably piss off both Powell and the consignor, who would have realized more from the sale of his set if Powell had known he needed to increase his bid and been able to do so.

As I see it, FWIW, the only equitable solution is to re-auction these cards with only those who previously bid on them permitted to participate. And, obviously, the total of the bids on the individual cards needs to be made continuously available to all bidders. And, all bidders need to be able to increase their own bids, and all lots need to close at the same time.

And what if some of the individual bidders are pissed off and don't participate and it all goes lower? Heritage is not going to risk that IMO.