Huggins and Scott Auction bid increments good for buyers, bad for consigners

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Any reasonable logic in my mind says +1 on this.

The smaller increments encourages additional bids due to every piece of marketing knowledge since the beginning of written time. Under no premise can I believe that the current bid price would be that much higher at this second with a higher percentage. People pay what it is worth to them, no one without a possible diagnosis of a mental disorder has an obligation to bid more money just to satiate an obsession to bid. I would say that you are completely eliminating more bidders with an obscene bid jump from the pool prior to extended bidding far more than improving end value for consigned items.

I wouldn't go as far as "under no premise" but certainly that's the case as a general rule. Still, I suspect there are plenty of collectors who might have some formula for calculating what they're willing to bid (based on prior sales and adjusting for buyer's premium, sales tax, shipping charges or whatever) then calculate that they're willing to bid up to, say, $594 for the card. And among those people are surely some who would bid $575 but not $600 if both options were available but who absolutely would have bid $600 if it was the first increment available after $550. On balance though, sure, smaller increments lead to slightly higher sale prices.