Auction House Mini Rant... (NOT the bay)

Seems like a conflict and a ripoff to me. But my question is how did they get it for $450 since that was the high bid from someone else? They should at least have to go higher.
I haven't had much experience with auction houses, just one (not counting ebay of course). They seem like a ripoff to me. 20-30% fees that you don't get back if you return the item, and on top of that 15% restocking fee. In other words, you can't return anything. It's far too expensive to do so.
And the kicker is, the descriptions are lame! They give very little detail about the items.

 

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I agree. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.

 

I see a lot of people jumping to the conclusion that this is nefarious. However, there are other reasons for the auctioneer to not accept a bid on Proxybid. They could have a live auction running alongside the internet bidding. Many Proxybid auctioneers use multiple platforms to auction their coins at the same time - auctionzip, liveauctioneers, etc.

I don't know if this is neccesarily the case here. I do see that it appears this auctioneer also has a bidding portal on his own website. I don't know what software is supporting this without making an account. If it is his own platform, obviously he would take an equivalent bid on his own website and not pay Proxybid fees.

Proxybid seems to be the place auctioneers go because the rules of ebay are too stringent. There is a whole range of sellers from high quality to shysters. It's important to analyze them thoroughly before conducting business. I like to search thru auctioneers past auctions. If they have a plethora of "sold to onsite" sales, I'll pass on that seller. Either they are setting hidden reserves, or they have another platform with bigger pockets. Either way, the chances of me winning the auction decreases dramatically and I have better things to do with my time than get in a bidding war with the auctioneer.


EDIt to add: + I like to see if the auctioneer is selling the same exact coins over and over. This is a big red flag for me also.

 

"Passes" actually equates to the potted plant in the back of the room getting it's bid in. Auction venues hope that people don't pay attention(lots have short attention spans anyway) and that they can slip through.

 

Passing means the reserve/minimum price wasn't met. The potted plant joke is a reference to getting bid up close to your maximum bid with no other bidders.

 

Now I know why I only buy straight from the seller, face to face. I don't buy big bucks coins on the computer. I don't trust many people, having been a state auditor for 30+ years. People/businesses are only as honest as they have to be.

 

I've been using Proxibid (and LiveAuctioneers, GC, HA, etc) for years. I'm aware that houses are on multiple platforms, and bids on platform A gets updated on platforms B, C, etc as the bids come in, and are shown as "Onsite". I also, as others, have seen coins/items relisted in later auctions, which I understand the reasoning behind. I have never had any problems with Proxibid, including twice when I had to return an item (an I got all $ back except shipping).

There is one (and only one) scenario that I could see this as having been actually sold to another bidder on a different platform, with the same, but earlier highest bid, but that's unlikely. As I said earlier, if the house didn't want to sell it for less than $X, they should have either had a reserve, shown a result of 'Passed', or at the very least, shown a 'Sold' price one bid increment higher then my proxy.

I'm not really upset I didn't get the coin, just unpleased with the way auction result was presented. I've lost plenty of other coins to higher bids, and it's just part of the game.

 

Back many years ago when I was a frequent attender at live auctions, it was not that unusual for the auctioneer to ask if anyone wanted to match the mail bid. If they did, the auction rules were ties went to the floor bidder. [Makes sense - the auction house got its check right away, didn't have to hope it would soon come in the mail. And if you knew the floor bidder's check was good, you could save the hassle of packing and shipping.] So it's possible that that is what happened here.

 

I do I in t really have a dog in this fight since I only buy from eBay. But I would surely try to put them in the hot seat and demand an answer to what happened.

 

Used to be an auction house by me. Everyone knew the top bidder was the Lamp in the back of the room. It’d be book bid / reserve vs the lamp until it got where it needed then anyone else want to join in

 

Should have "accidentally" knocked the lamp over to take out the competition lol

 

They use liveauctions as their primary and they show it sold at $450. Probably identical bids from both platforms and the primary won it.

But I would call them and ask.

 

I don't think many "auction houses" are doing that these days unless they have a customer base with more money than brains. I have been consistently blow out of the water in Heritage auctions for everything since the pandemic. I don't know who the Heritiage buyers are, but they have deep pockets and are willing to pay way over the previous record numbers

As for what happened to you, I think that the coin was "bought in." This is especially true if this is the SAME COIN that Heritage just auctioned. As the buyer, who got in at this level, perhaps his grandchildren will be able to bail him out years from now, after he's gone.

It really sucks when an auction house does this. I would not bother with them again.

 

If his proxy bid was the first received, he should have gotten the item. In the event of ties, it goes to the first bid received.

 

Probably not @johnmilton ... These (ProxiBid and LiveAuctions) are different platforms. Likely a manual interface between them, with a MBAG employee receiving a list from PB and entering them in LA. The LA date/time would be when the bid was entered by hand on LA not when it was entered to PB.

 

From my experiences, even though some coins are going for more than HA historic pricing, they are still going for less on HA and GC then the bay or LCS's. I'm literally seeing coins I have bid on on HA being offered on PB/LA 2 weeks later, and I'm not talking one or two coins. And I agree with you on the deep pockets, which is what many houses have, especially if they're spending on quick-turnaround inventory.

 

It goes both ways. Plenty of coins work the other way as well

 

I agree. I absolutely can’t buy at Ha lately especially earlier this year when I had some extra money. And was chasing a few pq coins for myself. I drove them above and beyond what they should have brought and often wasn’t even the underbidder. I usually can snag a couple nice things when I’m trying to. Not anymore

 

And floor bidders have no right to return items (except for authenticity) since they are assumed (in the terms of sale) to have examined the items they are bidding on beforehand..