Confused about Leu bidding

Congrats! I still am grateful they’ve moved their auction time to be more US friendly so I can steer clear of having to pre-bid and just attempt to Clio the coins I want

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I believe you're close to what happened. Their system only enters my max of 750 when it's forced to increment. Since his bid of 755 and my bid of 750 were then entered into the system at the same time, his won.

In terms of why my earlier bid of 700 didn't show, I believe it's because I was the high bidder at the time, so the system just simplified and increased that earlier record to 750.

As a software engineer, this seems to be a bug in their system. For future cases, I'll need to put pre-bids at odd numbers.

 

Same here. I went 1 for 2 yesterday and 6 for 6 at their last auction. Only one reached my max bid.

They take a while to invoice and ship, but in my experience they're a good outfit.

 

It's funny, all along I've been thinking that the people who make those weird bids just don't understand how bid increments work, but I suddenly see they may have been playing 3-D chess to my checkers all along!

Indeed! And it's kinda amazing that they send out so many well-produced massive catalogs overseas for free. I've gotten the ones starting with 6 & the 7's and like them enough I've considered buying 1-5 (until I saw how much they auctioned for recently!). Perhaps I'll be able to fill in with cheaper copies in a few more years as some collectors start needing shelf space.

 

@kirispupis since your maximum bid is secret and not publicly shown as long as it is not maxed out, the system will accept any bid that is equal or above the next possible bid step. E.g. if the current bid is 550 CHF, the next possible bid step is 600 CHF. But the system will also accept 601 CHF. Now if the previous bidder placed a bid of 600 CHF, the bid of 601 CHF is superior, even if only by a marginal amount. Thus, the bidder who bid 601 CHF wins. If this was not the case, the auction house would get hundrets of inquiries like "My bid was higher than the hammer, why didn't I win?". Furthermore, it's in the interest of the auction house to maximize hammer prices and 601, 610 or 649 is simply higher than 600, even if it's not a full step.

I think that's the bidding algorithm @pprp was talking about and which is used by almost all online auction systems.

 

Don’t put in an odd bid if you aren’t around at hammer time. The moment I see a coin has been bid to an odd number, 9/10 times I know I can win with just 1 more increment.

 

@kirispupis : there are 2 issues:

1. The bidding log does not show your intermediate automatic bids. This is something you can propose to the auctioneer to change for clarity reasons, although if you are experienced enough you can immediately tell what happened.

2. The auctioneer allows off increment bids as long as they are at least 1 step higher than the current bid. So if the current bid is 200 it will not let you bid 201 but it will let you bid 221. Now if someone had a prebid of 220 when the current bid is 200 and you bid 221 you will win. CNG and Roma had the same system but unfortunately lately forced only full bidding increments.

I suggest that if you cannot bid when your lots are closing to ask a friend to bid on your behalf. By letting a high prebid you only let others test it and in fact they may change their minds and bid even higher than they initially intended.

 

I didn't write that 605 was the winning bid. I wrote that 605 was "listed as winning at 605 CHF" i.e., listed as the currently highest bid.

Why would the auction site show 605 CHF as the currently highest bid if your maximum bid was 700 CHF or 750 CHF? At the very least, it would increment the bid by 50 CHF and show you as the currently highest bidder at 655 CHF. Maybe this is a bug in the bidding software.

Regardless, my initial post simply explained that, at some point a bidder made a bid of 555, or 605, or some odd increment. Algorithmically, if your maximum bid was 750, and my maximum bid was 800, the software would increment the currently winning bid in increments of 50 CHF up to 755 CHF, at which I would be the winner since your maximum was exceeded.

 

As others have explained, this is a way to be able to bid higher than someone else's (hidden) max bid without having to go all the way up to the next bidding increment. Here’s an example of a (much less expensive) lot I won this way in a previous Leu auction for a hammer price of 91 CHF.



Here is the bid history:

I am “mailbidder 4765”. The minimum bidding increment was 5 CHF.

I first put in a high bid of 76 CHF at 5:19. “Bidder 2” then bid 90 CHF at 7:46. This made him the high bidder on the lot, but the lot would have been displayed as having a high bid of 80 CHF, because Bidder 2's actual high bid of 90 CHF would have remained hidden. At 12:08, I put in my max bid of 91 CHF. This allowed me to bid higher than Bidder 2's (hidden) max bid, without having to go all the way up to the next bidding increment of 95. Bidder 2 did not bid again, so I won the lot at a hammer price of 91 CHF.

By bidding off-increment, I was able to get the coin for 91 CHF, instead of 95 CHF. If I had bid 90 CHF, Bidder 2 would have won the lot for 90 CHF (because his bid was made earlier than mine). If I had bid 95 CHF, I would have won the lot for 95 CHF. By bidding 91 CHF, my bid was registered as higher than Bidder 2's bid, even though I didn't go all the way up to the next bidding increment. By doing this, I saved myself a cool 4 CHF.

Obviously, this doesn't make nearly as much of a difference with less expensive lots like this one where the increments are just 5 CHF, but when dealing with larger bid increments, you can end up with a nice savings.

 

I would argue that it's fairer to non-live bidders for an auction to restrict bids to be only exact increments. E.g., if the increments are 50 then you cannot enter a bid that's 55 higher than the current bid. This would avoid the issue that kirispupis experienced, where at some point a bidder incremented the current bid by 55 CHF thus preventing the max bid of 750 CHF from being a functional maximum.

The only exception I would make is for a "cut bid" of half the increment, which allows for a bid that resolves a tie (i.e., when both bidders have the same maximum); but if a cut bid is presented, it must be the bidder's final bid and he/she is no longer allowed to bid on the item, even live.

 

I will try and explain it my way to see if it makes sense to you.

By increasing your max pre bid, you removed your previous max bid from the system & replaced it with a new one.
That is why it does not show up.


The other part has been explained above and is a way of bidding ( live ) that i have used myself.

It was bidder 4 that altered the pattern by testing the water at 605, hoping your max was 600.
This told him / her that you have gone to at least 650.
They then decided to try 755 hoping your max was 750 at the most. ( going up 1 bid level would have wasted the opportunity to bid 755 )
Bingo.
They found your max and avoided a full increment
Their max may well have been 750 like you, but, who wants to lose a coin at that price for a cheeky fiver

Hope that made some sense

 

That must've been so frustrating for the other bidder! Of course, it's fair play within that auction's system, and good strategy.

To quote Omar: "It's all in the game, yo."

I agree here (or at least "better," even if not any "fairer" in a strict technical sense). I think it's better just to have bids by increments as a lot of places do it. (Only thing I don't like is occasionally when an auction stops allowing "max bids" even well before the coin goes "live" by only letting bidders go up one increment.)

Another thing I'd like even more to see: On CNG's system, if someone increases the bid in the final seconds, the software adds another 15 seconds to the auction. That way it does no good to try and bid at the last second, since it'll always be "last second plus :15."

 

Many thanks to all who have responded! As I suspected, this was a case of me not understanding how the auction works fully. IMHO, it's still not fair - but that's how the auction works.

The following is what happened.
- I bid 700 CHF. The current bid is now at 550 and my max is 700.
- I upped that max to 750 CHF. Since the current bid didn't change, the system just increased my earlier bid to 750, as if I'd originally bid 750.
- "Dr Evil" then bid 605 CHF. Since this was more than the bid increment (50) it was allowed. The system immediately bid 650 for me, and since mine was higher I remained the winner at 650.
- Dr Evil then bid 755, which his again over the bid increment. The system immediately bid 750 for me, and since he was higher, he won.

As has already been mentioned, most auctions work this way. Where I was caught off guard is that most other auction houses limit which bids you may place through a dropdown. This eliminates these petty snipes. Some allow typed bids as pre-bids, but during the live portion all bids are via dropdown.

As I already mentioned, the reason I put a pre-bid was I knew I would be unavailable for the auction. I've been called foolish for doing this, but given that this was a cruise for our anniversary, the divorce proceedings would have certainly been more than 750 CHF.

Ultimately, it wasn't too bad. I bid on two coins at this auction and the one I won was significantly rarer, with only 4 recorded sales on acsearch (including a previous sale of this copy), and this one being the best of type. It previously sold in November 2020 for 480 CHF, and I won it for 500. An inferior copy sold at CNG for 1800 USD.

It is frustrating that this is the third time I've lost this particular coin, but unlike the other one I will have other opportunities. Even 750 was a bit too high given the condition, so there's a good chance I'll obtain a better one.

Again, many thanks for the help in understanding this.

 

If the increment was 50 CHF per bid, why would either the algorithm or auctioneer allow a bid of 650 CHF (which is only 45 CHF higher than the newly offered 605 CHF) to be recorded as the currently highest bid? If that's what happened, it's a bug in the software.

 

What I still don't understand here is the first bid 605 CHF from Bidder # 4. At this point the other two highest bids were 380 CHF (Bidder # 3) and 500 CHF (Bidder #2)... When @kirispupis bid 700 CHF, apparently the system displayed 550 CHF as the current winning bid. How come? (highest prior bid at that time was 605, not 500, so with 50 bid increment, winning bid should have been 655 not 550, no?).

Also, if Bidder # 4 really did bid before @kirispupis (as the Bidder # 4 number also implies), then why does the bid date show as Feb 27th rather than before Feb 18th?

Is there any way to fully explain the bid history without assuming at least one bug?

 

OK, but if that's the sequence of events, with both of Bidder 4's bids coming *after* yours, then why might they be considered as bidder #4, not #5 ? For bidders 1-3 the numbers appear to be based on date of their first bid.

I'm curious - do these bidder numbers appear the same if you log out from Leu (with your 750 bid then attributed to "Bidder 5") ?

 

Bidder 4 755 CHF 27-Feb-22 10:59:01
kirispupis 750 CHF 18-Feb-22 01:04:43
Bidder 4 605 CHF 27-Feb-22 10:58:48
Bidder 2 500 CHF 09-Feb-22 03:00:08
Bidder 3 380 CHF 15-Feb-22 03:47:59

If kirispupis remembers well he said he bid 700 when the bid was 380 and this immediately raised the bid to 550 (his bid winning). With the log above, I don't see how this could have happened unless the bid was 400 when kirispupis submitted his bid. Or otherwise bidder 2 had a prior equal bid of 380 so bidder 3 maxed him and then bidder 2 increased his bid. This means that when you increase your winning bid the time stamp kept is that of the original bid.

 

I think the bidder numbers change as long as new bidders come in. That's why I think this system is taken from auctiones.ch

 

Because my automatic bid of 650 and his bid of 605 occurred "simultaneously" Since mine was higher, it became the current bid.

 

But if this were correct, then the website would not even show the 605 CHF bid as the currently highest bid since there's no point. Instead, the 650 CHF bid would be the only one that was shown.