Heritage Buyers Premium

[raulus]

Originally Posted by calvindog

I agree. Similarly, why do auction houses only permit bidders to bid on items they put a bid on prior to extended bidding? How does this help either the consignor or bidder?

It seems like this policy forces people to at least put in placeholder bids before extended bidding. You may or may not really like that dynamic, but it seems like overall it has the potential to push stuff up a bit in the early going, rather than wait until extended bidding for the action to start.

And in terms of who benefits, it sure seems like the eventual winner benefits from having less competition. My odds of winning have to be better going against just 5 or 10 bidders rather than having to face the entire field.

My guess is that these days, most of us adjust our behavior to take this feature into account, and so anyone who is potentially a serious bidder is going to be in the hunt during extended bidding by virtue of having previously made a placeholder bid, and the odds of someone waking up during extended bidding and realizing they really wanted to bid on something new are probably relatively low.