We've have been purchasing at on-line auctions sine the year 2000 and largely for the most part, we have always felt that these systems are mostly fair and equitable to both the auction houses and bidders.
However, we have upon occasion have discovered or strongly suspected that there have been some auctions we attended where the prices were artificially bid up or inflated by dummy or fake bids. We've had a few times where the auction price reached our max bid and then stopped in its tracks and then later on discovered that the higher bidder backed out and that we were now declared the winner. This is not necessarily a bad thing to win as the runner up, but it does make us think a lot stronger now on making sure that our highest bid is really what we would honestly want to pay if we won the auction.
Our advice to you is to always do the math in your head and make sure that your highest bid is one that you are still willing to pay. Last thing you need is to win an auction and then later feel buyer's remorse because you paid your highest limit and then realized that it was too much. On the flip side of that, if you put in your max bid too low and lose out, you won't be too happy if you got beaten out by a small percentage amount, especially if you indeed were willing to have paid more. Our advise, is that if you really want an item badly, then it is worthwhile to not let the software do all the work and bid for you based on your max bid, but instead you might actually want to attend the auction live and make the decision to increase your bid in real time.
Best of luck buying at auction and always stay alert and be aware of any potential set ups or rigged auctions out there. Likely 99.9% of the time things will be just fine.
We Buy!
We want to purchase fine quality museum grade sterling flatware and hollowware!
If you have items that you'd like to sell,
or even just want to get an idea on valuation
please click the email us button for a quote.
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Thanks,
Greg Arbutine
Silver Museum Owner
The Silver Museum buys all sterling flatware and hollowware regardless if it is rare or not. We want it all!
Please sell your Sterling Silver Pieces to The Silver Museum!
Please get our offer no matter what else you eventually do. We are looking for great pieces for our Museum.
Excellent advice on bidding at on-line auctions!