Ever happen to you
 

An auction is open for more than a week. No bid on a certain card. You place minimum bid and are “winning”. Except someone outbids you 20 seconds later. Certainly odd. Only benign explanation I can come up with is someone sorted auction by recent bids and saw mine and saw a card they previously hadn’t noticed. Other than that seems, uh, peculiar.

It's weird, and occurs way more than any statistical analysis could support. An auction can be open for 2 weeks. A given item has no bids. I place an opening bid, and less than two minutes later, I am magically outbid. Happens repeatedly all the time...

I've always chalked it up to a hidden reserve, as any other explanation seems too far-fetched to hold water. Maybe someone here has a better explanation?

Is it possible the auction has a reserve and this is the way the AH maintains the active bidding until the reserve is met?

Guess it’s possible, but card I bid on was low dollar.

That’s a hidden reserve. I bet that is exactly what it is. It’s being shilled by the AH, except it’s ok bc it’s called a “hidden reserve”.

"I always feel like, somebody's watching me, and outbidding me"

Happens to me as well, I always chalked it up to hidden reserve

Is it possible that someone has alerts set up on the lot, and that they are waiting until someone else bids before they do, hoping that they win the lot with the only bid? I'm not sure that makes any sense, but perhaps some bidders don't want to be the first to bid, especially if the opening bid is high.

Actually I think Steve nailed it. With Chad's thoughts also being a possibility. I know as a buyer I search by recent bids, and it definitely brings things to my attention. Then, in our auctions if you are the only bidder on an item before extended bidding you automatically win it at 10pm on closing day, so that can disincentivize bidding on it early and hoping it slips through the cracks. However once someone else has bid on it, you have to get your bid in to be eligible for extended bidding on that lot, so there's no reason to wait anymore. If it happens in our auctions I can assure you it's not "funny business" on our end, and it's not the consignor directly (though it is hard to catch someone if they are determined to have a buddy bid on their items)

A long time ago I put a bid in on a card in a Mastro auction. And this was after the investigation was going on. I bid on a super esoteric card (*maybe it was 2 of them) and I immediately got outbid. I told an FBI acquaintance of mine about it. Later it was ascertained I was shill bid.

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Could happen for different reasons on different platforms. With PWCC, they have the scrolling bar across the top showing cards with the most recent bids. I often discover cards I'm interested in by seeing them listed up there, which I wouldn't have otherwise found or searched for explicitly.

I think the bid sort theory certainly holds water. There’s so much junk and starting bids placed at well over the value I would assign that I very often search by a minimum bid of 1 to sift it out.

I have noticed that from time to time. Certainly makes one wonder.