clean sweep auctions and the penalty for bidding late

[sports-rings]

I have never participated in a cleansweep auction and there is an item I am interested in.

The auction ends tomorrow and in reading the rules it states that they discourage bidding in the middle of the night by increasing the buyer's premium as the auction goes late into the evening.

It looks to me like they don't use Simple auctions (as far as I can tell). From what I understand, auction houses do not know your maximum bid if they use Simple Auctions software.

I hate to reveal my budget to strangers at the auction house and all the talk over the years of auction house ethics, issues and conflicts of interest is not helping lessen my concerns.

Furthermore I reached out to them last week and they never returned my phone call.

Does anyone have experience with cleansweep and has anyone put their max bid in early and had positive results?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by sports-rings

I have never participated in a cleansweep auction and there is an item I am interested in.

The auction ends tomorrow and in reading the rules it states that they discourage bidding in the middle of the night by increasing the buyer's premium as the auction goes late into the evening.

It looks to me like they don't use Simple auctions (as far as I can tell). From what I understand, auction houses do not know your maximum bid if they use Simple Auctions software.

I hate to reveal my budget to strangers at the auction house and all the talk over the years of auction house ethics, issues and conflicts of interest is not helping lessen my concerns.

Furthermore I reached out to them last week and they never returned my phone call.

Does anyone have experience with cleansweep and has anyone put their max bid in early and had positive results?

Simple Auctions can do it anyway the auctioneer wants it. Nowadays many auction houses, mine included, don't want to see the max bids. But they CAN make it where you can see them if you want to.

Not too long ago I put in a max bid with Clean Sweep and got it for 2 increments below my max.

[perezfan]

I have put in probably 20 max bids with Clean Sweep over the years. I recall the approx. breakdown as follows...


9 Times - Won at Max Bid
2 Times - Won at less than Max
9 Times - Outbid/Lost

Please don't read anything into this... that's just my recollection of events.

[sports-rings]

Thanks! Leon, are you following me around this evening? LOL

I remember last year I wanted something at SCP and decided to put in a max bid. Seemed no one wanted the item and it never moved past my initial bid. The winning bid was way below the max bid.

[gnaz01]

Michael,

I have only bid twice in their auctions and won both items by putting in my max bid and won both significantly lower than the max bid.

Greg

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by sports-rings

I have never participated in a cleansweep auction and there is an item I am interested in.

The auction ends tomorrow and in reading the rules it states that they discourage bidding in the middle of the night by increasing the buyer's premium as the auction goes late into the evening.

It looks to me like they don't use Simple auctions (as far as I can tell). From what I understand, auction houses do not know your maximum bid if they use Simple Auctions software.

I hate to reveal my budget to strangers at the auction house and all the talk over the years of auction house ethics, issues and conflicts of interest is not helping lessen my concerns.

Furthermore I reached out to them last week and they never returned my phone call.

Does anyone have experience with cleansweep and has anyone put their max bid in early and had positive results?

I think your point is very well taken, and as I recall there was a thread about just this issue some years ago. As a matter of principal, I think it is wrong for any auction house to require a bidder to reveal his/her high bid in order to avoid being penalized with a higher BP. In saying this, I am in no way saying Clean Sweep does anything improper with this information. But a bidder has no control over the bidding patterns of anyone else, and because of that he cannot control the time his bid might be topped, forcing him to raise it. If that should happen after the time when the BP increases, that bidder has just been penalized for exercising what I regard as a basic right to keep his bid confidential until actually placed. I'm not aware of any other AH besides Clean Sweep that does this. I have a recollection too that when this issue was discussed previously, the AH, to support its contention that its motivation behind this practice was to end the auction earlier, as opposed to generating extra revenue, said it would submit the extra revenue generated by the increase in the BP to charity.