Strange AH occurrence

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by swarmee

One of the auction houses has a rules sheet that includes language to the extent that: "We reserve the right to make bids up to the amount of the hidden reserve..." or some such. It's possible that this was occurring, and when no additional bids were made, they contacted the consignor and asked whether he/she would reduce the reserve to the current highest actual bid. When that happened, they killed all four bid increments, and you were left as the high bidder.

It's also possible that for some reason, you were outbid by an actual bidder, however he sent the auctionhouse a message saying that he intended to bid on a different lot or didn't realize he couldn't pay with Monopoly tender, and the auctionhouse retracted them. However, I would hope they would contact you and explain the situation. That's one reason I don't really like the blind bidding process many of these auctionhouses seem to have. At least with eBay you get a sliver of a screenname (6*****a) that you can see is an actual bidder, or whether you're bidding against one person or 30.

John, these are certainly possibilities I had not thought of. Even though a bid is a binding contract, it's probably easier all-around for an AH to just retract bids and ban the reneger. Of course, the lack of an 'outbid' email makes you wonder. Again, perhaps I had an eyeball fail.