Interesting thread on the non-sports board

[Rob D.]

Originally Posted by vintagechris

I once bid in an auction with a company I thought was pretty honest( I won't name them as I have no real proof they did anything unethical) basically they had several small autograph lots of less than 20 cards each. They were all worth about the same. I put in bids on them willing to pay between $100 and $150. To my horror on the last day of bidding I went to check my bids and noticed I had mistakenly put a ceiling bid of $1350 on one of them! I thought about calling them and telling them this but then just decided how much higher could it go for what I really wanted to pay for it?

So, the auctions end that night all selling for around $150 and how much do you think the one I screwed up on sold for? $570 and there is no way those cards were worth anything near that and I just had a hard time believing a legitimate bidder kept bidding that lot up and was willing to pay that much for them.

Chris,

One of the things I've been fortunate to learn from a handful of posters on this board is that descriptions in an auction catalog can greatly influence selling prices. You might see totally out-of-this-world prices realized, and the reason might be the really cool descriptions in the catalog. Marketing is another thing that can drive up prices in an auction.

So maybe the write-up for the lot that sold for much more than its counterparts simply had a really great description, and maybe that one lot was marketed a lot better.