[BigJJ]

The auction house practices of (i) house bidding, (ii) house consigning, and (iii) access to absentee bid amounts, etc. extend beyond Heritage - I believe to nearly every baseball auction house - except REA (with Honest Auto Bid). Please advise of others.

This discussion should include Heritage, but extend beyond it - perhaps in a new all encompassing thread.

We should be encouraging all auction houses:

(i) to have a block-out screen for absentee and ceiling bids
(ii) to not have house bidding (or if you do, to make each such BID public RIGHT WHEN IT IS PLACED), and
(iii) to not have house consigning (or if you do, to state in the description that such lot is house-owned)
(iv) to not have hidden reserves

Which auction houses state that they do this? Which do not so state?
And - how do we know that they are adhering to their published rules anyway?

If you're not taking food from Heritage (please give it to me), who can you take food from? These practices are endemic to the field of auctions - there needs to be better federal/state laws reflective of advances in technology (screens for absentee/ceiling bids) and advances in understanding (auction houses likely should be only auction houses). But a collecting community can have some impact, particularly on the larger players in the arena.