What percentage of your auction bids are winners?

I had a couple of bids in a well known auction that ended yesterday, but didn't win anything. This is not uncommon, but it made me start thinking about how often I'm not the winning bidder. After a quick mental tally I believe I am only winner of about 25-33% of the bids I place. This makes me wonder if perhaps I am out of touch with the ancient market?

All of that raises the question, what percentage of your bids win?

 

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That is rather high from my experience, but I don't do ancients. My "bid won" rate is below 10% online. But that'll happen - I'm cheap.

 

I would say about 10-15% of my bids are winners. I don't think a low percentage of successful bids make a buyer out of touch because the market is so variable.

I see a lot of coins I like go way above what I would be willing to pay but at the same time I have won a few coins that I was shocked to get at the price I did so it really just depends on who's bidding that day and how much that coin appeals to them. Very rarely (like twice) do I just decide I have to have a coin at almost any price.

 

My success rate varies. Typically 25% or less for bids placed in advance of sale. I have a much higher success rate when bidding live.

 

25-33% is damn good if you ask me. If I had to guesstimate mine, somewhere around 10%.

 

Sometimes, I'll place two bids in an auction and win both of them. Other times, I'll have ten bids down but walk away empty-handed. I've never kept score, but I'm pretty sure my hit rate averages out to 10% or under.

 

I used to track this but haven't in a while, but mine runs ~10-15%.

It's not a particularly meaningful statistic though, at least for me. In some auctions I may drop a half dozen live bids on coins that are going low, not expecting to win them with a single increment (or two) bid, and I usually don't.

If I separated out coins I was very determine to have, the number would be higher. I don't know how to break it down like that though. There would be too many categories: Coins I really really really want to win; Coins I'd like to win but will recover from the loss within a day or two if I don't win; Coins of opportunity (bargains), etc.

 

It should be expected that your winning percentage should be similar to the mathematical inverse of the number of bids cast on the kind of lots you buy.

For example, on a single coin with 4 bids the winning percentage will be 100%, 0%, 0%, and 0% for the four bidders. But over time, if they have similar wealth and taste, than each would win 25% of the bids.

If you buy a lot of coins with high starting bids you may be the only bidder and your rate may approach 100%. If you buy a lot of coins that attract many bids you will have a low success percentage even if you are completely average.

If you find your success rate is lower than would be expected by the above you are more frugal than average. If it is higher then you are more flush than average.

I would guess my own rate at 5% for coins outside my area of specialty, and 33% for coins within.

 

On coins I am buying to resell, probably 10-20%. On coins I REALLY want for my collection, probably 80%.

 

It really is simple. If you are bidding in single increments and low-balling everything your success will be very low. If you are entering high bids the rate will be much higher.

 

I suppose that is why my percentage is very low. I'm always looking for a bargain. I can't help myself.

 

Good rules of thumb, not that I sell, but we've already covered that ground. But I do try to pay what I would if I were getting stuff to sell.

 

Since April 8th, won 2 lost 10, of those I was serious about...I'd say I'm shooting about 50%.

 

my typical percentage is 10% or less. 25-33% sounds like an overbidder to me

 

Wow, I don't feel bad to say 5 to 10 percent.
I put a limit on just about everything. There are to many cool coins out there to buy just to spend my budget on 1 or 2 coins.

 

if you're like me.. all your choices make you change your mind

 

If most of my bids were winners, then I'd have a lot of bargains. I'm a cheapskate.

 

I'm quite a new collector with wide-ranging interests, so there's nothing that I *must* have, but lots of things that I quite like. So I've been leaving lots of lowball bids in case other people are asleep. I win a small percentage, mainly the things I particularly liked and went higher on. Nothing I'd say is a wild bargain. But as I start to specialise I expect my interests will narrow and there will be things I must have, even if I pay over the odds. As I become more selective I expect my win rate to improve.

 

Speaking of auctions...here is the lot sheet for my next backcountry "no Internet bidding available" rural Pennsylvania coin auction. There's stuff on the other side of each page too. More slabbed stuff than usual this time. And for a change, there's about 20-some lots of ancients. And yes, before anybody asks, there are "no pichers". That's why I get up at 5:00AM on a Saturday morning to bathe, dress, and drive an hour and a half to the sale site - so I can examine what interests me "in the hand" between 7 and 9 AM, when the first lot goes up.



How'd I get these sheets? Were they posted on a website as a pdf and I printed them? Well, I could have done that, yes. But they sent them to me ... in the mail ... with a postage stamp on the envelope and everything, like civilized people do.

 

..2410is50%? hmmm..sounds like 20 to me, but it's according to whose doin' the figurin' i reckon