MEARS lot "vanished"
 

So I understand the occasional need for an auction house to withdraw auction lots for various reasons. What I cannot understand is why it needs to be done without even acknowledging that it. Mears had a single signed Babe Ruth secretarial baseball in their auction. I was watching the lot and even placed a bid on it. I know I was losing it last night when I made the decision to let it go and to not place another bid. There were at least 2, maybe 3 bids on the ball last night. I'm looking this morning to see what it sold for an cannot find the lot. I looked at all lots 2x thinking I maybe missed it. Its not in my wached lots or bid on lots either. I cant even tell you what lot # it was because its nowhere to be found. Its as if the lot never even existed. If the lots going to be withdrawn at least say so!

and when did Mears switch their closing method. They had been closing their auction like most others late into the night all at once, now all of sudden its on a lot by lot basis.

It'd be nice if they mentioned this. Go to place bids later in the night and everything was closed.

They lost money for them and their consignors.

A couple months ago when they closed the old way they had a countdown clock and closed the entire auction when it had 10 minutes on it. When they restart it every 20 mins or whatever they should at least close down the auction on one of the times the clock hits zero, they lost money from me on that one too.

I've had zero problems with any other auction house closing, and now twice with them, disappointing.

oh and I too noticed the clubhouse Ruth vanished around 8 or 9 pm.

Guess they were unhappy with the bidding on it, so they pulled.

Thanks for the post - I thought that I was loosing it - I went on Mears yesterday evening to check my bid and thought that i spaced out on which auction I had bid on the Ruth ball. The ball was a rare Barnard (American League President) - strange that Troy yanked the lot. I would rather have a clean Barnard ball, but was high bidder most of the week. We'll find out what happened.

Their last auction they did the same thing. I was watching an item, and then bid on it, and on the last day it disappeared. Not the first time it has happened with Mears. And I do like Mears, just weird.

They sent out email announcements about this! I think it was last auction, not exactly sure, but I got an email announcing "new bidding procedures." I also got a reminder email about the new bidding terms yesterday.

Items I've consigned to them get pulled when reserves are not met. At least in my experience with them.

Albert

The Ruth ball got pulled hours before the official end of the auction. It doesn't appear they gave it the full time to reach any reserve that may have been on it.:confused:

I also noticed that some of the minimum bid amounts changed (between last night and today). A few lots had $100 minimums from the beginning of the Auction through last night. These items received no bids, and now are showing higher $200 - $400 minimum bid amounts. Not sure why they would change this after the fact :confused:

I think they changed this policy after an auction went on for an incredibly long time. Something like into the next day Eastern time, and then all of the East Coast bidders woke up, saw the auction was STILL going on, then had another few hours of continual bidding. I think that angered a lot of bidders, so Mears started looking into different auction ending procedures then.

I've noticed that Mears is a bit sloppy when it comes to auctions. I won an item once and was even mailed the invoice. But then they contacted me saying the consignor didn't get his minimum bid and that they messed up (by not bidding me up, I guess). So, they couldn't sell me the ball...weird.

Also, I personally have issues with auction houses that seem to never end their 'extended bidding clocks'. Why not just add a few hours back on then instead of always renewing the clock at 14 mins or so? And yes, I noticed this last Mears auction ended a lot earlier than their usual constant resetting of the clocks.

That doesn't sound like your problem to me...

Yeah, but there wasn't much I could do. It was just some messy auctioning.