Auction house bid increment thoughts

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

Small increments allows a bidder to bid on it while being high on another lot as Well.

But, using this same logic, it allows another bidder to make a small increment bid on the lot you are currently high on.

[BeanTown]

Exactly, thus I will make a small bid back at him or even jump the bid. But bottom line is the bidding war has begun and that only benefits the consignor and auction house.

Originally Posted by egbeachley

But, using this same logic, it allows another bidder to make a small increment bid on the lot you are currently high on.

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

Exactly, thus I will make a small bid back at him or even jump the bid. But bottom line is the bidding war has begun and that only benefits the consignor and auction house.

But you said at first that you have a budget, hence not wanting to do a large increment. So you are unable to continue the bidding war and the auction house makes less.

Small increments or large increments even out in the long run.

[HotSpringsBaseball]

Obviously we don't all agree on what incremental increases work best, but I think we can all agree on one thing... Eric believes higher increments are best and it all works out in the end!

[Snapolit1]

I'm the first person to say that I am sure people whose business it is to run auctions have given a lot more thought than I have as to how they can best maximize their profit. Capitalism can be a wonderful thing in problem solving.

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by HotSpringsBaseball

Obviously we don't all agree on what incremental increases work best, but I think we can all agree on one thing... Eric believes higher increments are best and it all works out in the end!

Not exactly. I disagree with the premise that smaller increments leads to higher ending values. I believe that for any particular auction, at times the smaller increment creates a higher ending value at at other times the higher increment creates a higher ending value.

But an advantage to higher increments, as others have said, is that it creates less "last-minute" bids which allows auctions to end earlier.

[BeanTown]

10 percent makes a different strategy. With higher value lots, you might want to do a top all bids up to a certain price point. Then you know if you lose the "bidding war" the winning bidder paid up for it. I think Hal Lewis and I had a nice debate on that 15 years ago 😃

[pokerplyr80]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

10 percent makes a different strategy. With higher value lots, you might want to do a top all bids up to a certain price point. Then you know if you lose the "bidding war" the winning bidder paid up for it. I think Hal Lewis and I had a nice debate on that 15 years ago 😃

I don't really have an opinion either way on which is better, but it certainly did change the bidding pattern for the card I was watching/bidding on. The price jumped about 100% on the last day. Cards in this range seem to get bid up a lot faster with 10% increments, sometimes hitting the final hammer price days before the auction closes.