Rock Island December auction

[alvin]

I tried three. Not really need any of them, but just sitting there watching for the whole day was a little bit boring, so... Initially, I worried if I won all of them, I could be in trouble. Finally, found I won nothing. One came very close though, just missing $100.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by alvin

One came very close though, just missing $100.

That's a fallacy. The winning bid could have been thousands over that...The $100 just indicates the price where your bidding ended...

In the early days of Internet auctions, it was common for some bidders to bid an astronomical price for an item (that he really wanted and could afford) in the knowledge that no one in their right mind would pay that much for it...

Example: Plain Jane Luger, worn, some mismatched parts, etc, only worth ~$800. You want a plain Luger, nothing collectible. Start of auction is $500 (realistic price), you bid $800 tops, rich kid bids $10,000...

You can't see his bid, you only see that it is $100 more than your bid [in our example]...So you stop when it goes over what you think is ridiculous and you won't bid anymore (and wouldn't pay that much for a 'shooter')...So you think "I only missed it by $100"...When if you had kept bidding, it would have kept increasing...

Rich kid doesn't care...Money is toilet paper to him...

There is also the 'house bid'...I ran into this at bank repo auction many years ago...To get people to show up and bid (and hopefully catch bidding fever), the auction house will start [and advertise beforehand] an auction with low bid, way beneath what item is worth...If it looks like the bids on the item will lose the house money, the house will enter a bid...And keep bumping it up until they think they can make good their investment...

I don't know if these practices persist today, or if there are other ways to pump up the prices, but it wouldn't surprise me...I'm sure shill bidding is still alive...