posted on September 12, 2004 03:56:50 PM new
Real Life Auction experience
I was wondering what folks thought about bid running at real life auctions. In my area (somewhere in the middle of the midwest) most of the auction houses are run by good honest families who run a straight auction and are fair to both consignors and bidders, on the other hand there are few area auctions where the house runs the bids all the time taking bids from invisible bidders who almost always are "bidding" from somewhere WAY WAY behind the last row. Most of the auction regulars know and agree about which houses are straight and which are not, yet the not-so-straight ones continue in business year after year without any apparent problems. Does this go on in your area? Any solutions? What do you think about houses where they run the bids?
posted on September 12, 2004 04:22:58 PM new
Postcardman, I live in the middle of the midwest, too. Near Des Moines, in fact. If you know of an honest auction house in this area, I would be interested in hearing of it. From my experience there isn't one. Not exaggerating.
posted on September 12, 2004 04:34:36 PM new
Absolutely there is bid running at many auction houses! The one I used to go to, twice a week, had me fooled until an oldtimer told me about it. He said when something he wanted to bid on was up for bids, he'd walk over near the front and watch the audience to see if there was real bidding. The auctioneer was aware of this.
posted on September 12, 2004 04:52:28 PM new
I agree with Roadsmith. I have worked my share of auctions and have seen very few where I did not see "bid running" if the prices were down. The auctineer has to recoup his overhead and if the crowd isn't paying enough $$, he'll either run bids or be out of business soon.
I don't agree with the practice, but if you are a bidder, it is up to you to know your item AND the auctioneer. As a bidder, I don't bid unless I have full view of the audience so I can see if I am getting shilled. But then again, I've attended enough auctions that I know to look the merchandise over very carefully, set a price I am willing to pay for an item and not get caught up in buying when the price seems too low. Usually if an item is coming in too low, it is because there is a defect that the dealers have noticed but others haven't.
If you expect to walk into an auction 5 minutes before it starts and walk out with an armload of "steals", you're probably going to find yourself coming home with a box full of junk.
There are good deals to be had at auction, but they go to the educated bidder.
posted on September 12, 2004 05:01:00 PM new
Oh, you asked if there are any solutions??
Yes, in most states auctioneers are licensed.
You can report them to their regulating board. Will you put them out of business? Probably not.. auction fraud is hard to prove after the fact. IF the board does decide to check them out, after numerous complaints, they will run straight auctions just long enough to make sure they don't lose their license.
The best way to put them out of business is to quit going to their auctions and tell everyone you meet that they are crooked.
Even that does not work. There is one guy here in the Panhandle of Florida who has been running auctions for 20 years. He is one of the most blatant thieves I've ever seen. But his ads pull enough enough newbies every week to keep him in biz.
And want to really waste your money?? Go to those high end rug, art or jewelry auctions advertised in the Sunday papers as being sponsored by a high end auction house from a large city. Use your brain, if the "art" they were hawking was really worth $$ they would sell it in the big city, not run it out to Podunk USA.
posted on September 12, 2004 05:02:18 PM new
Some of our auctioneers do a 'fake' $5.00 opening bid and we regulars know it. So..sometime the auctioneer buys things if we all hang tough and don't take the bait. They are great folks though and most of the time the item is worth way more than that first $5.00 bid that comes out of the air.
posted on September 13, 2004 10:47:56 AM new
In the "good old days" we used to go to a lot of auctions at a local gallery. We worked with the wife of the suction house owner so got know the auctioneer and felt that it was an honest family establishment. A couple of things happened that could look like shilling. There were a lot of left bids. I know we did that when we could not attend. These were bid by the auctioneer as if you were present like the proxy bidding on eBay. There were also reserves (no eBay did not invent them) and the house would bid for the consignor if the bids did not meet the reserve. If the auction did not state "without reserve" there was no way to tell if things were being "bought in" by the house.
The only thing I remember being talked about as dishonest were the buying syndicates the antique dealers formed. They would get together and decide who would buy what or if there was a lot they would decide on a bid and split it up afterwards. My understanding was that this was actually illegal although I am not sure how it could be stopped.
We no longer attend live auctions because of eBay although we still go to antique shows and shop the malls but more for exercise and entertainment than for buying.
-----o----o----o----o----o----o----o----o
“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
