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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kirispupis, post: 7887680, member: 118780&quot;]Hello everyone,</p><p><br /></p><p>Recently, I&#039;ve been tracking my bids and strategies in order to understand what strategies work best and whether shill bidding exists. The following are my results:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Auction Company 1</b> - Sent a pre-bid for my max for one coin. Won it at my max.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Auction Company 2</b> - Sent pre-bids for two coins, both with medium to low offers. I won one coin at one level below my max. The other coin went for over twice my max. I then bid live on two other coins and won both at their opening prices.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Auction Company 3</b> - I entered pre-bids for ten coins. Four coins I won at my max and one coin I won one level below my max. I lost on the other five, including one the impressively went for 6x my max (which I had thought was strong).</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Auction Company 4</b> - Bid on one coin live. Won it at 70% of my max.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Auction Company 1</b> (different auction) - Planned to bid on 13 coins live. Three I never bid on because they went higher than I wanted before bidding began. I bid on 10 other ones and won 5. Of the 3 coins I <i>really</i> wanted, I won all three. I was massacred on coins I wasn&#039;t as willing to go deep on.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Some facts</b></p><ul> <li>None of the coins above was Roman. I pretty much stick to Greek coins from the time of Alexander the Great and the Diadochi.</li> <li>The way I collect is I have a list of what I&#039;m most after. Every coin I was <i>determined</i> to win, I did. Most of the coins I lost were because<ul> <li>It was on the list, but super common so I could be patient</li> <li>It was on the list, but I knew of a dealer with a similar quality coin, so I stopped bidding when I knew it would be cheaper at the dealer.</li> <li>The coin wasn&#039;t on the list, but I kind of liked it</li> </ul></li> <li>Therefore, the coins I won were strong bids</li> <li>Auction Company 1 is on Biddr. Auction Company 4 extends the auction by a few seconds when there&#039;s a new max. Auction companies 2 and 3 end immediately at the designated time.</li> </ul><p><b>Some observations</b></p><ul> <li>I don&#039;t have numbers to prove this, but it seems that pre-bids are much more common for Roman coins than Greek. I didn&#039;t bid on any Roman coins, but it seems like a larger percentage of them reached their hammer price during pre-bids than for Greek.</li> <li>There&#039;s a <i>very</i> strong market for Greek bronzes right now...or there&#039;s one or two people who are after the exact same thing as I.</li> <li>Greek silver ironically doesn&#039;t seem as strong. Sure, if you&#039;re after a Lysimachos tet, you may have to sell a kidney, but many of the less well-known types are reasonable.</li> <li>For some reason drachms have been realizing high prices. Tetradrachms have been more reasonable. I know that drachms are actually rarer than the tets, but for some mints the price hasn&#039;t been that far apart.</li> </ul><p><b>Shill bidding conclusions</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p>At first, I was convinced of shill bidding due to almost always having to pay my max offer. I&#039;m no longer so sure. At the last Auction 1, prices were very high. I honestly thought I&#039;d be able to grab all 13 coins based on prior prices, and I was shocked how aggressive the bids were. For the coins I won, I think I did all right, and there were still some deals I noticed.</p><p><br /></p><p>The following are what I believe are the reasons for the competition I&#039;m seeing:</p><ol> <li>There are more buyers out there. I did see some unwise bidding - offering way more for a coin than one can get at dealers. Those would seem to indicate less savvy buyers with excess cash.</li> <li>There are also a decent number out there who are <i>very</i> familiar with the same coins and are after the same things as I. I do think that my list provides an advantage here. If the coin&#039;s on the list, I fight for it (unless I know I can get it cheaper elsewhere). Otherwise I let it go. </li> </ol><p>So, I don&#039;t <i>think </i>there&#039;s shill bidding out there, but I&#039;m still not going to put any more pre-bids.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Auction Strategies</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p>I honestly believe there are advantages and disadvantages to live vs pre-bids. It also depends on the type of auction. </p><ul> <li>For those with a sharp end time, sniping (bidding max at the very end) makes sense. The primary reason for that is below.</li> <li>For bidding live on a site like Biddr, there&#039;s a huge disadvantage in that it can get emotional. The other party sees that he&#039;s bidding against someone else, and one can get very possessive over that coin. These wars can drive a coin beyond sense.</li> <li>Similarly, pre-bids can also cause wars. One receives a notification of outbid, and there&#039;s often ample time to rethink that max and reset it.</li> <li>Research is still key. At the last auction there were five coins from one ruler on my list. Four were blah to meh, while one was excellent. My research indicated only one coin (a meh) was minted during his lifetime. The top quality coin was bid up madly (higher than dealers&#039; prices), while I won mine for a fraction of that.</li> <li>I&#039;ve therefore come to the conclusion that to win a coin at minimum price, one must minimize that psychological obsession. The best way I&#039;ve found to do that on Biddr is to place my max bet right before pre-bids close. When the coin goes live, the other party will keep bidding it up, but every time he&#039;ll see an automated bid. The higher the bidding goes, the more he has to think. Even though it <i>is</i> another person, it doesn&#039;t have the same psychological meaning since there isn&#039;t a physical person continuously raising the bid.</li> </ul><p>That last strategy did help me with my top target at the last auction. I was extremely worried since similar coins were going very high, and this coin was very difficult to come by. I was willing to go very high, but I was scared of paying that much. On two other coins I got into back and forth wars that brought them way higher than they were worth. Luckily, I backed out of both and let the other party pay too much. </p><p><br /></p><p>So, I used the exact strategy above, and sure enough the other party bid the coin up rapidly, then slowed down as the bids got higher. Eventually he gave up, a good deal below my max and lower than I&#039;d lost the other coins at. I&#039;m convinced that I could have paid double if I&#039;d gotten into a war.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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