[paul]

I just looked at Heritage's terms and conditions in the back of their Catalog. Paragraph 13 says that consignors may set a "minimum bid" in writing, and that this bid is "generally" listed on the website a few days before the close of the auction. This appears to be what we usually call a reserve -- in this case, a temporarily secret reserve.

Paragraph 21 says Heritage may bid on items it consigns or other items.

I agree with Jim VB that it would be much better to disclose this more clearly. A nice "how our auction works" introduction at the beginning of the catalog would help. And I don't really think it would sound that bad: "To protect our consignors, we allow them to set minimum bids in writing. To encourage bidding early, we don't post the minimums until near the end of the auction. To avoid the situation where a willing buyer and willing seller still won't result in a sale, we reserve the right to place bids until the minimum bid is met."

Edited to add: Now that I think about it, something still doesn't make sense. If the reserve is eventually posted, then any bidder who wants the item can bid the reserve amount, even if no one else is willing to bid anything close to the reserve. This eliminates any legitimate need for the auction house to bid. So I'm not sure what's going on.