Total rookie here, getting my feet wet in the world of ancient coins. I have tip toed into the auctions at CNG. Starting small, but I don't understand how the bidding works right as time expires. I have had the winning bid several times as time expires. Then after a few seconds, I find myself outbid and the winning bid to be several increments higher. So for example, time expires and I'm winning at $150. A few seconds later, the lot comes up as closed, with a winning bid of $175 by somebody else. Since this happened a few times, I waited until I had a winning bid as time expired, and then discovered I was still able to bid and I outbid myself by an extra increment and ended up winning and being charged the higher amount. I have tried figure the answer to this by looking over CNG's website, but the answer isn't obvious, at least to me. Fundamentally, I don't want to be doing anything dumb and making repetitive rookie errors and if there is a strategy to this, I'd like to know. Appreciate any answers/advice. Thanks.
People frequently leave last minutes bids, a la ebay. Sounds like you're getting 'sniped' here (and in the latter case, someone left a last minute bid at the same number as you did and you won by having the early bid)
What you describe makes sense, but what I find particularly confusing is the ability to enter a bid after time has expired. I'm not familiar with ebay, presumably this is all obvious to those more savvy in the world of internet auctions. Thanks for the response.
I have had this happen to me. I am trusting CNG and other firms are enforcing their cutoffs appropriately, its just computer lag that is leading to out of date information. One of the wealthiest bidders there is in technology, so I am certain he had a sniping program built to autobid for him at the last second. I wish CNG would offer that, let us leave our highest bid and they place it automatically with a few seconds to go. Many coins I would have bid higher, but was afraid to bid early thinking I would get back to it, but then the auction closes before I remember to bid on it. As high as I know many people think CNG realized prices are now, if they instituted a sniping function I bet you they would be higher. Not all of us have the resources of a tech billionaire, ya know?
You aren't allowed to enter a bid after time expired, but sometimes you can put it right before expiration and due to timing issues it'll seem as if it's last second. I believe one of the recent auctions had an issue where auction extensions were accidentally turned on (last second bids extending the bid window to be open for a bit longer)
I always enter my bids exactly 5 seconds before closing. In many cases, I was automatically notified that I was outbid, which means that there was a higher prebid. However, on a few occasions, I would have the winning bid up until the last second (literally one second before closing). Evidently, some people prefer to enter their bids even later than I do. I don't think it's risky to enter a bid with a few seconds to spare. However, I wouldn't leave it to the very last second to enter my bid, especially since my computer is a bit slow.
Yeah, but that requires you to be online at the auction actively paying attention. I would bet a large amount of CNG's clientele like myself are busy people and cannot waste our time doing such things. That is why I believe if they had a snipe feature it would be very lucrative to them.
I think there can be a bit of a lag, and if someone is a bit faster on the trigger than you (or me) it can lead to those millisecond losses. Last time I bid in CNG I think I was sniped three times. I had better luck with the Leu auction but I entered my bids with ten seconds left and then followed up at 2 seconds, lost eight times but won twice.
