Higgins and Scott Auction bid increments good for the buyer, bad for the consigner

[BobC]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Just emotionally, the smaller bid increments would get more action from a larger variety of bidders, who are now invested in attempting to win the item. And rather than having to spend $250 to bump from $2,500 to the next bid, they can go less than half of that and take the lead.
Kind of like when you watch Storage Wars on TV and they're going $500, $600, $700, then bidding slows down and the auctioneer accepts a bid at $750 rather than calling SOLD at $700. Locker might still get one or two increments and sell for $800-850 rather than the $700 if it weren't for that half-bid.

What John is saying.

C'mon, pretty much everyone knows the real action doesn't start in online auctions till things hit the extended bidding period, and usually AHs don't allow people to bid during extended bidding unless they'd placed a bid before then. The more people still able to bid, the better the chances there will be at least two people to really drive the price up.

A lot of times people see various things in an auction they're interested in, but only bid on a couple so they don't overextend themselves and go way over their budget. And then if later on during extended bidding they get shut out, they can't now go back and bid on those other items of interest because they're now locked out of extended bidding on them.

In the long run, you would normally expect an auction item to end up at about the same winning bid, despite the bid increments. Just look at live auctions where the auctioneer will often cut the final bid increments to eke out every last dollar from the bidders.