Posted By:
PaulI think I'm the person Leon was referring to. I won one of the N173 Old Judge cabinets in the last Mastro auction. The individual bids were miles behind the group bid until the very end, but then the individual bids inched out the group bid by just a few hundred dollars.
It worked out fine for me, but only because I was in a rather unique situation. There was nothing else in the auction that was selling for anything near what I wanted to pay. So, I didn't have to make any strategic decisions about whether to keep bidding on the individual N173 or redirect that money elsewhere. And even in my situation, it was annoying to think that I could be the high bidder by $1,000 or more on a card and still not win.
The other difficulty with this format is that the clock restarts on the 30 minute rule any time anyone bids on any lot in the group. I was the only bidder on my card for hours, but the clock kept getting reset back to 30 minutes every time someone bid on one of the others. Of course, I'm glad they kept bidding. That's the only reason the group bid lost.