Auctions End Too Late
 

Auctions end way too late. I had bids on all three auctions (Mears, Goldin and LOTG) and I fell asleep with my laptop on my lap at 11:30 PM.

A lot of items ended MUCH lower than they would have if the auctions ended at 11:00.

An example:

https://loveofthegameauctions.com/Lo...ventoryid=3939

I was outbid at 2:02 AM. TWO IN THE MORNING! Who the heck is up at two in the morning to bid on baseball memorabilia!?!?!?!?!

I would have brought the bidding to $4,000+ if I were awake. It's insane to have the bidding go until the end of the night, you're essentially eliminating all of the bidders who have a life.


That is all.

Jason

Jason, it is the west coast. 2 am to you is 11 pm to us. Then there are bidders in Hawaii, Alaska....

I agree with your basic point, auctions do go so late it is kind of silly. But if you would have brought your bid to 4K if awake, why didn't you just set a max bid, and go to sleep? You don't have to be awake for your max bid to go to work for you :)

That's what I did, and won 3 of the 5 LOTG lots I was bidding on.

I put some max bids in, but never got an email notification if I had won or lost lol. Just check my account, and I won one of them :)



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is no definitive answer to this debate but my auction partner and I firmly believe there are more bids when folks know the end is in sight (and exactly when it is). Why not keep people interested the whole time? The days of all night auctions should come to an end, imo. And as a consignor I want everyone awake and bidding. Personally, I fell asleep, woke up and started bidding again around 130am this morning......that is crazy imo. If and when I sell my collection I will favor an auction house (if not my own) that will end lots individually. I want everyone awake and alert..... Just my opinion and I am not trying to disparage any auction house. I still bid in all of them but I end up bidding more when I stay awake and alert and "in the game".....rather than falling asleep before it ends.

+1

Thank you. I truly think they exclude a percentage of bidders who cannot stay awake past 2:00 AM. What type of transaction is conducted at 2:00AM?? Seriously, baseball card auctions are the only dealings I can think of that are conducted at TWO IN THE MORNING. If the rest of the known world has switched to a more sensible system, why haven't we?

And to anyone who would argue, "put in a max bid next time!" I don't trust auctions not to shill me. Not only that, I should not have to make a wild guess at where the auction will end just because there is the possibility someone will out bid me at TWO IN THE MORNING.

I agree with the OP. Lots should end individually when there are no further bids on that lot after 15 or 30 minutes. I prefer those auctions and bid more aggressively in them. I was asleep when I got outbid on the one lot I was interested in Goldin Auctions. Might've been a different story if the lot ended individually.

Amen. Ending the lots individually is the way to go IMO.

Another vote for lots ending individually here. Maybe if enough of us speak up, more of the auction houses will go this route. At this point, it's still under 50% of the major auction houses.

I think it's ridiculous. I have really cut way down on bidding in auctions that go on forever including REA.

To me its simple.....
If you trust the auction house, place a max bid before you call it a night
If you don't trust the auction house, then you shouldn't be bidding at all

I think it's the 15 minute rule that is too much. Why not five minutes without a bid? If you get two chuckleheads trying for one lot at the very end and they keep waiting the 15 minutes to bid, then everyone has to wait. I won something on LOTG, but it was already at my max bid around noon yesterday, so no reason to watch.

On the flip side, I've sat here watching multiple lots for hours and that's always annoying. Auction houses are not East Coast friendly, that is for sure.

I set max bids on two auctions and was outbid at 2:40AM, but I probably would have still bid more. Not really unfair, but guys that manage to wait out the entire auction have the luxury of keeping on clicking the bid button until it finally surpasses my max and I can't react to that.

I prefer auctions that end by individual lot and I doubt it really affects prices. I also don't mind what Clean Sweep does with penalizing bids with extra buyers premium after a certain time to discourage those late bids.

That is why
 

I usually just throw in my max bid and go to sleep.

Auction houses want higher prices, so they go with the format that they think will bring in more bids. One of the reasons for all lots close at once is the ability to switch from lot to lot if you become outbid. For example, if you have three lots that you put bids out, but are currently losing on all 3, and have a $500 budget, you might first bid on the lot that you want most. However, if that lot exceeds your budget in extended bidding, you might want to switch to another lot. However, if the auction ends lot by lot, then that lot may already have ended, and you would not have a chance to bid on that lot any more. The other thing of course is that if you are busy (such as feeding or putting the kids to bed) when the countdown clock begins for extended bidding, then you may not have a chance to look at the bidding during extended time, and then auction may end before you can put your bids. (All of this is where you don't believe in max bids due to fear of shilling.)

Obviously, I'm on the west coast, so the all lots ending at once works great for me. I put in placeholder bids in the auction for all lots that I am interested in when the auction first opens. Then after all of the kids are asleep at night, I take a look at the bidding around 10:30 - 11pm PST, which is near 2am EST, and then put in any new bids that I think are worthwhile.

Another vote to have individual lot endings.

I don't throw in my max and go to bed, because I've seen and heard too many shilling stories to do that. Maybe I miss out on an item here or there, but life goes on.

I've been arguing for lot by lot closings of auctions for years now. Auction end times are getting more and more ridiculous. If you talk to auction houses, they will tell you they believe that lot by lot closings reduce the final prices they will get for items. I personally don't believe this and have never seen a study that shows this is true.

The only way this is going to change is for those who care to stop bidding on auctions that don't end lot by lot. I know that takes fortitude but if you want something to change, you need to be part of the solution instead of the problem.

I've been allocating more and more $$$ to auctions that close lot by lot in addition to completely refusing to place bids in auctions that include 1) owners who are in prison or 2) owners who have cheated little old ladies out of their retirement funds on tv.

It's time for this hobby to clean itself up. Are you part of the solution or the problem?

jeff

I won three of the four lots I had bids in on. My max bids were set for a couple of weeks, with a couple of bumps made in the mean time and not a single bid placed yesterday. I have four children and am a Church goer so there was no way I could stay up. Turns out the one I lost was bid on at 1:15am Central time. That was the first bid on that lot in the last few days.

In that case a lot by lot situation would have been great. Forget 15 minutes, what about 48hours without a bid. :D

Oh well as Leon has said before there is no perfect solution, but I do think the lot by lot may be my current favorite. I only have to stay up long enough to watch my interested lots not get anymore bids for 15min.

I am still very happy with the three lots I did get, and won't sweat the one I didn't. Since it took that long for someone to bid I assume it was just a "too good of a deal" bid and it will be flipped soon enough and I will just try to pick it up then.

As someone who ran auctions for many years, this was always an issue that concerned me. The problem I see is there is nothing in the rules to compel bidders to place early bids. Many auction houses have initial bids close at 9:00 PM, but many bidders don't even start placing their final bids until the wee hours of the morning. Why should they? There is nothing in the rules that forces them to do so.

If there was a rule that stated "initial bids must be in by 9:00, and if you don't start bidding by 10:00 you will be disqualified from further bidding", everybody would bid early.

What I've discovered is auction houses for the most part don't really care. They are terrified of losing bids due to rules that are too stringent or too complicated. So they don't care if bidders have to stay up until 6:00 AM as long as that 6:00 AM bid puts a little more money in everyone's pocket.

It would be easy to come up with a system to end by 11:00 or midnight if auction houses were motivated to do so. But their only motivation is to get as many bids as possible. So it's unlikely the system will change much at all.

I always leave a ceiling bid and go to bed. I've taken the position that if I can't trust that the ceiling bid will be handled properly, then I shouldn't be bidding at all with that auction house. But I know this is a topic with a lot of different opinions.

What about a mid-point?
 

Select a dollar figure: $500, $1000, whatever. Close the ones that are under that dollar figure Lot-By-Lot. Anyone that has cleared that value at initial auction end time closes without a bid ON THAT ITEM within fifteen minutes.

On the high-value lots, they call go all night. But a bid on a $25 PSA 4 1961 common should not bump those auctions an additional 15 minutes. That's my recommendation.

I was actually up all night at work, so I got to watch the auctions close. But I tell you what, when I was outbid on an item in Goldin at 2:30 in the morning, I was pretty much numb and didn't even go back to up it one more bid. Which contrasts with MEARS, where I was going back-and-forth on many items for an hour.

Ken

I don't think it's complicated at all. Initial bids in by 8pm, from 8-9 you can only bid on lots you bid on already, then make it a 5 min rule, not 15. You don't need to close lots individually if bids are coming in faster, eventually people will run out of things to bid on and with the shorter time, you don't have to wait for a couple people trying to wait others out by not bidding until the last second every 15 minutes. They could literally have four bids in an hour under the current rule. Knock it down to five minutes and those four bids can be made in 20 minutes.

Waiting 15 minutes for a bid is ridiculous and I've sat there and seen the clock reset with less than a minute multiple times.

After reading all of the comments, it seems like ending an auction at 3:00pm hurts consignors.

There is no person bidding at 3:00AM who cannot bid at 10:00PM, but there are hundreds of bidders who can bid at 10:00PM, but not 3:00AM.

I remember waking up one time at 5 in the morning and a well known auction house was still going on. So I started placing bids. I could have extended it the next day and all the east coasters could have joined in and made it last well into the next morning. But I think the auction house owner woke up and just pulled the plug on the auction, because even though the 15 minute counter was still going on, all of the sudden the auction ended. Those auctions definitely favor the west coast, but it is nice sometimes to see them fall back into the east coast's lap in the early morning hours.

That being said, I favor auctions that have individual auction lots ending at their own times. Poop or get off the pot!

As pointed out, there is one obvious problem with each lot ending individually. If you place ten qualifying bids, then spend the night watching your one key lot and bidding on it every time you are topped, if you finally reach your max and can't go higher, your other nine lots may have already closed. So maybe in that example you had a $2000 budget put aside for that auction and you ended up spending nothing. That is not good for the auction house.

Closing lots individually will likely end an auction earlier, but at a price.

As a bidder, this is how I bid. I've got a budget, and sometimes I'm interested in more than one item in the auction. With auctions that close lot-by-lot, I lose the flexibility of being able to re-allocate money within my budget to other lots as I get outbid. I have won numerous lots in auctions this way over the years, and thus I prefer auctions that close all at once. I've been saying this on Net54 for years.

That said, as an auctioneer, I can definitely see the other side of the coin. I do receive phone calls from people every auction, asking what time I think the auction is going to stay open until. That said, I also receive bids. 20% of the dollars spent in yesterday's LOTG auction came from bids that were placed yesterday. I can't help but feel its a disservice to the consignor to shut the auction down before everyone who wants to place a bid has placed a bid, regardless of what time it is.

There's also the time zone issue. In my first auction, I went into extended bidding at 6PM eastern time. I received one wave of calls from west coast bidders who were unable to place bids because extended bidding started in the middle of the afternoon, and a second wave of calls from west coast bidders who were frustrated because they went out to dinner, came home and logged in to bid, and the auction was already closed.

It's for this reason that I'm with Jay - I strongly recommend using the max bid feature. Of course I understand why many people feel uncomfortable with this, and its unfortunate. We all want to participate in a hobby we can trust, and if we're not comfortable, it's awfully difficult to leave a max bid and walk away.

Definitely a complex issue with many different perspectives.

-Al

I agree with Al. There is no perfect system. If you're an auctioneer, you just go with the one you think will work best.

Al and Barry- Good points of course. I don't have the magic bullet but only feel the way I do, along with Scott. Maybe we'll be swayed differently in the future, who knows. Given the pluses and minuses we believe the best results are in the "lot-to-lot" closing as of now. Quite honestly, either way really lets you spend all you want to if you can't live without something :).

It's just unfortunate for the consignors who are the ones ultimately losing money.

I imagine an empty auction house with one person awake at 2:00am sniping all the lots he wants. Imagine if this was a physical auction.. Would you leave the auction open until 2:00am? No.

It prevents "bidding wars" from occurring - that's a fact.

Every AH owner, bidder and consignor will agree that back to back bidding wars bring in the most money. I bid, you bid, I bid, you bid, I bid, you bid. That's what brings in the most money. It needs to be back to back, you can't have an hour, two hours or five hours in between the bids.

With auctions ending at 2:00 AM it's I bid, (you wait until 2:00AM) you bid. There were a lot of bargains last night because of it.

Edited to add:
I know auction houses can't disclose this, but it would be interesting to see who is bidding at 2:00am. If it's all West Coast collectors then it's an issue between time zones, if it is all dealers and notable resellers, then those bidders are just taking advantage of a broken system.

We've discussed this before, Al. Your argument here doesn't hold water. There's not evidence that you wouldn't still get 20% of your dollars spent yesterday if you ended lot by lot.

Max bids are great but let's face it. For rare items without good pricing data, it's difficult to determine what the max is you would truly spend. Many times I've gotten up in the morning and saw that I lost out on a lot I put a max bid on and knew that if I had still been up when the last bid was placed, I probably would have probably gone one (or two?) more. Don't forget that this scenario costs consigners $$$ as well.

The reality is that the only way to stop auctions from going all night is to force people to bid faster. While I prefer lot by lot, I think reducing the time it takes for an auction to close when no bids are made from 15 to 5 minutes could significantly reduce auction close times and I'd be all for it.

jeff

Put me down for lot by lot endings in our straw poll.

Ending times going into 5-6 am EST range is unreasonable. :mad:

One of the more interesting ideas I've seen from an auction house is the changing buyers premium. All the lots close at the he same time, but as the evening goes on, the buyers premium for new bids gradually increases. By doing this you encourage earlier max bidding (if you put in a max bid early and someone else bids late causing your bid to automatically increase you still get the lower buyers premium, but if they end up winning they pay a higher premium), but still give the option to keep bidding open.

DJ

+1 on bidding wars. It would be interesting to see an auction house end lots the old fashioned way, with a real hammer, though not so old fashioned as it would be streamed live online.

This was my thinking on why I wasn't for lot-by-lot when B-L first used this, but I have since changed my mind because the "flexibility" is a myth. There is no flexibility if you are unable to stay up. When I lost out on one of my lots I would have switched my bid to another card in LOTG, but I wasn't awake when it happened at 1:15am Central. So either way my money didn't get reallocated.

Why not run sports auctions using the live internet lot by lot format used by most antique auctions? Internet bids could start about a week or two before the live auction. The live auction could start at a time convenient for both coasts and be over in a matter of hours. This format is fair for everyone and has a defined beginning and end.

Agree 100%. I like auctions that end lots individually. They all should do it that way. What's the point of keeping everyone awake???

I know Huggins ends theirs on a lot by lot basis and it seems to work for them.

I will put in max bids with houses I trust. Last night I won 6 lots all with max bids in LOTG. I don't know Al personally but the members on this site have made me feel more than comfortable doing this in his auctions.

I try to have my BST & EBAY auctions end during hours when I'm awake. If I lived on the West Coast, I'm not sure I would adjust the time for the bidders, but I guess the response I got would determine that.

I am getting too old to stay up through the night - I can always check the results in the morning. At this point in my life sleep is more important than any cardboard.

I agree with Kiya, I won both my items with Max bids I put in 2 weeks ago and won them for less than my max, so it truly is a trust issue. Same thing with REA, won my only item I put in a bid 3 weeks earlier and won, getting it for $400 under my max bid.

My preference is lot by lot but I understand the drawbacks to it. I wonder if a hybrid system would work. AH software should be able to determine if a bidder has been active on any lot in the last, say, 15 minutes. Any one lot could close if all the bidders on that lot hadn't bid on any lot in the last 15. The countdown clock would be reset for each lot as an initial bidder bids anywhere. I think that solves the problem of being able to bid elsewhere once you lose a preferred lot. Make sense?

This sounds like how Bagger's does it.

You are making the assumption that the world lives within your hours. It does not. And I think your characterization that people who are up past 2 am have no life is... unfortunate.

I was a stock broker for 3 years before I had to retire. I worked the overnight shift, and I talked to clients all night. I placed trades all night. Why? Because I had clients living all over the world. There were American citizens all over the world. There are people in the military, American citizens, living all over the world, wherever they happen to be stationed at the time. There are people with dual citizenship that have homes in foreign countries, and they move back and forth between countries. There are people with jobs that travel a lot, and that travel will often extend beyond the contiguous 48 states. My ex-girlfriend was a model, and depending on where she was needed for a shoot, she could be in Milan, Paris, London or Chicago. There are other people, pilots, flight attendants, doctors, engineers, etc that will travel for work all over the world. Then there are people who go on vacation. Lots of Americans like to go to Europe, or Asia, or Australia, or South America. And, as was previously alluded to, your 2 am in New Jersey is 11pm in California. Your 2 am in New Jersey is 9 pm in Hawaii. All these people I mentioned don't suddenly stop conducting business at 2 am your time. We had at least 30 employees working overnight every night because there is a great demand for business being conducted during the time you are usually asleep.

If there is something in an auction that you have to own, put in your max bid price, and go to bed. If you are outbid, live with it.

If you are so worried about being shill bid, then stay up. Major auction houses like REA have two auctions a year. They publish the last day of the auction in big letters on their catalog. It's printed on their website, and it's listed on the Old Cardboard auction list, and I imagine other sites that cover the hobby like Cardboard Connection, Beckett, etc. You have vacation days, right? Use one if you absolutely have to have something, and you need to be there late to bid. Otherwise, don't, and wait for the item to come up again somewhere else. Or, just accept the fact that you were not meant to own the item. We don't always get what we want.

But to suggest that the entire industry change how it does business because you can't stay up a couple extra hours is absurd. I don't see the auction houses bemoaning lost revenue. They're breaking records left and right, and their consignors must be doing well, otherwise they wouldn't keep coming back.

Now you know there are other transactions being conducted at 2 am. Stock trades, ETF trades, options trades, futures trades. Lots is going on in the world while you are sleeping.

I have no personal knowledge or experience, but I doubt auction houses gain much by running things until the crack of dawn. If there were a fixed earlier closing time, I think the same bids that came in late would have come in earlier. And maybe more from people who don't want to either stay up late or place a max bid. It seems to me late-running auctions are a holdover from the telephone days where maybe it made more sense because it was hard to get through on the final night.

I think you're not understanding my point.

We're not talking about the (very) small percentage of bidders who work until 1:00AM or 2:00AM, I myself am at the office until 1:00AM or later some nights. I'm talking about the 99.95% of East Coast bidders who are being excluded from the bidding process.

Agree with this.

Whoever bids last has the advantage, like last ups in the bottom of the 9th.

No obvious way to fix that.

No, I completely understood your point. I'm not an idiot. And by the way, your statement "99.5% of East Coast bidders are being excluded from the bidding process" is patently false. First of all, it's a made up statement. You pulled that number out of thin air to support your complaint. It has NO factual basis whatsoever. None.

You have no idea how many east coast bidders stay up later when an auction from a major auction house is coming to an end. The ONLY input you have thus far is from the few people that have provided statements in this topic. I promise you that if all but a half percent of east coast bidders were being excluded, the major auction houses would immediately make a change, because the amount of income that they could conceivably be sacrificing would be enormous. But that is not happening. Why? Because, again, viable options were suggested to you-placing your max bid on the item you're wanting to buy, and going to bed, is a perfectly acceptable option. If I want a nice Lou Gehrig 1934 Goudey that's up for auction, and I can't be at my computer that late, I look at the card, and then I look at the recent sales history for cards of similar quality. Then, I figure what I'm willing to pay to acquire that card, and I enter that maximum bid. If it's that important that I participate in late bidding, I stay up, and take the next day off. I never had any trouble getting a day off if I wanted it.

If neither of those are options for you, you will need to look elsewhere for that card, because you're not getting it from that auction.

It's not like "last up in the bottom of the 9th" at all. The home team can win it in the bottom of the ninth without the visiting team ever coming to bat again. In an auction, there is nothing preventing the participants from bidding at the very end if they so choose. If they've placed just one bid on that lot, they are entitled to bid after 9pm, right up until the auction closes.

In an auction setting, somebody that stays up late really doesn't have an advantage. For example:

Bidder A put their max bid in at 3pm on auction closing day.
Bidder B is staying up late. They put a bid in before 9pm, and it was immediately outbid by Bidder A.

Now extra time after 9pm starts. For the sake of brevity, we'll say that only Bidder A and Bidder B are left. Bidder B decides what they're willing to pay for the item. Bidder A decided their maximum earlier in the day.

It's very simple. If Bidder B is willing to put in a bid that is higher than Bidder A's maximum bid, they will win the item. If they do not put in a bid exceeding Bidder A's max bid, then Bidder A will win.

What would have changed had Bidder A been there? Nothing if they were honest with themselves, and put in what was truly their highest bid. If they put in $4,000 was the highest they were willing to pay on an item, and Bidder B put in a bid of $4,100, Bidder A isn't going to pay anymore. They told the system the most they were willing to pay.

The system worked.

Bidder B wins the item because they were willing to pay more than Bidder A. That Bidder A was not there to witness Bidder B winning the item is irrelevant.

Bidder A would have bid more but he fell asleep at 2am and didn't want to use the max bid feature, no matter how safe it is. From what I have experienced, spirited bidding drives prices up more than being able to stay awake the longest. But what do I know anyway??

Exactly! You're excluding bidders. You (and most auction houses) are essentially saying, "If you don't want to stay up until 3:00AM don't bid." Why would any seller in their right mind make such a ludicrous statement and condition of sale?? You're clearly excluding bidders.


I still don't think you're getting this - obviously there are ways around the arbitrary encumbrance of inconvenient auction times, but why put the arbitrary rule in the way of bidders to begin with?

Are there more bidders available to bid at 3:00AM EST or 11:00 PM EST? I'll give you a hint, it's 11:00PM. That's undeniable. Why end an auction when there are less bidders available to bid? Seriously, this isn't rocket science.

Yes, you can place a max bid, but how many time have you placed a max bid and have been outbid by one increment and thought, "Damn, I should've gone higher." I know I do it several times each year, and as other users have commented, it's apparent that this is a common occurrence. These bidders were denied the ability to increase their bid because of an arbitrary rule that has absolutely no benefit to the consignor, bidder or auction house.

You can argue, well if you don't stay up late enough you obviously didn't want the card enough. Why is a person's sleep schedule a prerequisite to buying a card? Is it necessary? I've bought cards at the National before and I can tell you confidently that none of the dealers required me to send them an email at 3:00AM as well as pay the purchase price to buy a card.

The rule is arbitrary. No one could possibly deny that. There is no benefit whatsoever and one would very successfully argue that it eliminates the largest bidder pool in the auction.

I have yet to see any benefits to keeping an auction open until 3:00AM and any minor pseudo benefits that have been noted are clearly overshadowed by the obvious negatives.

The instructions you posted on how to overcome the obstacle of inconvenient auction times could more easily be solved by changing the auction format!

Bidder A or B might have models as girlfriends. :D:D:D