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Posted By: barrysloate

Hal- on a different note, I can tell you as someone who has run many auctions that leaving your max bids a week before the end can't possibly help your chances of getting a lot at the best possible price, and often hurts it. You are just setting a target for another bidder to keep raising his bid until he reaches his limit or finally tops you. I found first hand that when bidders left very large ceiling bids early in my auctions, they did rather poorly, and in many cases remained high bidder for perhaps ten days and then lost the lot in the last hour. If a lot reaches your limit with a week to go, then that's a good time to leave your final bid and be done. But why not wait until you are ready to go to bed on the last night and then leave your max bid. I think it has more impact at that time. I was always happy to receive a max bid early in my auctions, but if a collector actually asked if that was a good strategy I would tell him to save his max for the last possible moment. That's just my opinion looking from the inside out.