REA and other auctions, ridiculous delays

[glchen]

Originally Posted by Runscott

...As Jeff mentioned, we got the 'fair warning' email around 3:15, but bidder behavior didn't change much. You would think that all those very late bids for high-dollar items like the BN Ruth and the Gehrig/Ruth signed ball would have been placed a bit earlier, I mean - if you are serious about spending over $200K, why take a chance on REA ending the auction abruptly?

You "snipe" to save money, which is true even for the big boys, or even more so as each additional bid increment + BP is in the 10's of thousands of dollars. So you bid as late as possible, hoping that your rivals have already gone to bed and will not counter. Everyone says leave your max bid, but often times, the max bid is someone's "reasonable" bid, and not truly their max. Also, many bidders are still concerned with shilling, so don't like leaving max bids. As to why risk REA ending early, I think the psychology is, these are such huge dollar items. Every additional bid increment is tons of money for the consignor and BP to the auction house. The auction house will not end the auction without at least giving the other party 10 minutes or so to counter before ending the auction.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by glchen

You "snipe" to save money, which is true even for the big boys, or even more so as each additional bid increment + BP is in the 10's of thousands of dollars. So you bid as late as possible, hoping that your rivals have already gone to bed and will not counter. Everyone says leave your max bid, but often times, the max bid is someone's "reasonable" bid, and not truly their max. Also, many bidders are still concerned with shilling, so don't like leaving max bids. As to why risk REA ending early, I think the psychology is, these are such huge dollar items. Every additional bid increment is tons of money for the consignor and BP to the auction house. The auction house will not end the auction without at least giving the other party 10 minutes or so to counter before ending the auction.

I agree completely with everything you stated. In chat, we surmised that as long as a few of the huge items (like the BN Ruth) were still getting action, everyone felt comfortable dinking around about putting their bids in.

Also, while it's disappointing for a bid to come out of nowhere at 3:00 a.m., when the item's been dormant forever, in my case it was a good thing - I had been questioning the wisdom of my bid and was happy to lose the lot.