CNG revealing all proxy bids

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by Andrew McCabe, May 13, 2020.

  1. svessien

    svessien Senior Member

    I take it they expect us to do our duty and see through that the pre-bids are as high as possible?
     
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  3. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    It was only the latter. The book only ever got mentioned if there was a tie bid between the high floor bid and the high book bid.
     
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  4. Gallienus

    Gallienus coinsandhistory.com

    I've had the pleasure of sitting in an auction firm's office while they get these emails from people registering for their auctions who put down the strangest & most questionable reasons why they should be registered. They sit there trying to decide if this person's going to honor their commitment to buy an item should they win it; that's all.

    Really I don't think they're going to track you down or sell your information to credit card copiers. Just photo some invoices or name some dealers who [hopefully] remember you and send it in to them.

    I'm registered at CNG and even have known Victor since the days when he did those traveling coin shows. Not that it does me any good in these days of insatiable Chilean billionaires tho.
     
  5. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    That isn't what happened. The only time a book max bid was announced was when the live bidder exactly tied the maximum book bid. This is standard practice as the book bidder takes preference over the live bidder on ties. You have to tell the live bidder that their apparent high bid is being replaced by a matching book bid. And no one was ever exposed. All bids are by paddle numbers, both live bidders and book bidders.
     
    DonnaML likes this.
  6. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    We never announced what the maximum book bid was during bidding. I am not sure how this got into the thread here. We would never do that, and I agree, I am sure that would be illegal, and if not, completely unethical.
     
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  7. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    Again I state, we didn't reveal proxy bids. I am not sure who posted this but it is just not true.
     
    Nicholas Molinari likes this.
  8. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    No the book bid was not exposed before it was reached.
     
  9. baseball21

    baseball21 Well-Known Member

    That's good to hear and thanks for the clarification
     
    Nicholas Molinari likes this.
  10. nicholasz219

    nicholasz219 Well-Known Member

    @MSG 78 I am assuming by your responses that you are affiliated with the auction house. If that is the case, then thank you for explaining what happened.
     
  11. ab initio

    ab initio Well-Known Member

    I have contacted the owner of CNG and he is very much aware of the problem. Here is what he asked me to convey to the Forum:

    One flaw in the Auction Mobility live bidding platform is all bids are accepted by the platform manager. This was set up for in room bidding, which we intended to do with auction 114. We modified the platform for this auction due to Covid 19 social distancing. When we held Triton in January, like in this sale, when there was a tie bid between the live bidder and the high book bid, we had to back out manually the live bid and enter the high book bid. We did this anonymously. After the sale we had numerous calls from live bidders who felt we "screwed them" by removing their bids and giving them to someone else - which indeed we did do. It just happened to be the high book bid when it tied the live bid.

    This is no different than we, or any other auctioneer would do as long as I have been bidding in auctions. It used to be, with CNG, that Eric would sit at the front of the room and say "We have X here". This clearly indicated the floor bid and the book high bid had tied. Any additional bid would have cleared the book. Everyone knows this.

    So in my effort not to have irate callers in this modified sale, I asked the auctioneers to make clear to the live bidders what had happened and why we were changing the high bid to the book. This is all on me personally. And indeed I had no calls from live bidders complaining that they didn't understand what was happening. As you now know, just the opposite occurred. I had numerous calls from prebidders complaining that we were exposing the book bids. This wasn't true in any case except where there was a tie between the high book bid and the live bidder.

    The end result is, I solved a problem, and created another. It's all on me personally. I thought I was taking care of an issue and clearly some customers felt differently.

    Where we are at is we have a meeting scheduled with Auction Mobility to solve this problem. I am not sure there is an easy solution but the goal is to have the high book bid placed automatically when the current live bid matches the high book bid. It's a programming issue. Is it complicated? I don't frankly know. We shall find out in the next few days.

    So the end result is I created some "bad blood" quite unintentionally. I would love the chance to share this information with the Cointalk link but so far I have been denied the chance to do so.

    Perhaps they will let me join at some point. But for now the damage has been done and I feel terrible about it.
     
    Shea19, dlhill132, Ryro and 17 others like this.
  12. pprp

    pprp Well-Known Member

    Thanks for this update, and it is always nice to hear from you; you're a great example of a collector who although dominated the market in certain areas, offered his knowledge to the community...

    IMHO, if I had to procure a bidding software platform, I would chose a well proven one. All others in the US business (HA-Stack's) have something much better already. It's also quite annoying to do the beta testing on the bidders in a real sale... For sure the 2-step bidding is nonsense and has to go; you can just ask the bidder to confirm once that he intends to bid at the start of the session. The issue with the max bid in the book matching the live bids is already dealt by HA for example and I don't think it would be something difficult to implement in software.
     
    Roman Collector likes this.
  13. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    Stacks also uses Auction Mobility. It virtually the identical software we used in this sale. There was no beta testing going on. The only thing different for this auction was the live aspect with no room bidders. That was never our intention when the software was developed. Covid 19 forced that to happen.
     
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  14. pprp

    pprp Well-Known Member

    I am not sure if you are not trolling or you are who your initials suggest. It's also not clear why the owner of CNG has been denied access to post directly here as mentioned by ab initio. This is absurd and everyone should be given their freedom of speech.

    I can't really understand what COVID had to do with all this. From what I read the flaw in your system is the following one:

    "When we held Triton in January, like in this sale, when there was a tie bid between the live bidder and the high book bid, we had to back out manually the live bid and enter the high book bid."

    The manual input needs to go. I don't think HA do it manually. When there's a prior equaling your live bid it immediately shows up so it can't be manual. w.r.t Stack's I can't remember what happened in such occasions. I also don't remember them having this double bidding step, but I don't bid in their auctions too often. If it is the same software indeed then it is just setting up some parameters...
     
  15. Nicholas Molinari

    Nicholas Molinari Well-Known Member

    Thanks for clarifying.
     
  16. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    The HA software is very good. But in a live auction they are still entering the bids manually. A computer can't see someone raise a paddle in the auction room. The two step "place a bid" method is open to debate. I have bid in HA auctions where the bid I placed was more than I intended because the bid increment on the button jumped as I was clicking on it.
     
  17. Nicholas Molinari

    Nicholas Molinari Well-Known Member

    Andrew, according to Mike (I believe it is Mike, anyway), it was only when the high bid tied the book, not when it was getting close. Are you sure you are remembering correctly or do you object also to them revealing the proxy when it was a tie?
     
  18. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    I am the owner of CNG. I kept entering usernames and they were already taken. Finally I settled on my initials and year of graduation. Nothing sophisticated but it allowed me to register.
     
  19. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    Andrew, not true. We never announced a high book bid when the live bid was "getting close". Didn't happen.
     
  20. MSG 78

    MSG 78 Active Member

    I actually own CNG.
     
  21. Eukratides

    Eukratides New Member

    I watched and listened to the auction and didn’t think it was anything but normal.
     
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