"21. The Auctioneer or its affiliates may consign items to be sold in the Auction, and may bid on those lots or any other lots. Auctioneer or affiliates expressly reserve the right to modify any such bids at any time prior to the hammer based upon data made known to the Auctioneer or its affiliates."
The following scenarios are perfectly acceptable in a Heritage auction according to this rule as I understand it:
1. Chris Ivy can consign his own card. He can watch to see if any top all bids come in. When one comes in, with full knowledge of it, he can bid that person up to their maximum by stopping one increment short of the top all bid.
2. If no top all bid is placed, Chris can simply be an aggressive bidder in the closing minutes of the auction, continuing to artificially drive the price up, while watching who the other bidders (with knowledge of their previous bidding habits) are and how they are reacting. When it seems that his last bidding opponent won't go any further, Chris can simply withdraw ("modify") his last bid two seconds before the hammer falls, leaving the "underbidder" as the actual winner.
3. Chris can bid up a $1000 card of his own up to $4000, creating a new threshold of a "realized price" for that card. He can then re-sell the card in another format with that high number of a "price realized" on the record in places like VCP.
I don't know any of the folks at Heritage other than Peter (who I like) and have no evidence to suggest that they have done any of these things. But it seems reasonable to infer that they have these rules there for a reason. Chris Ivy suggested in this thread that they do not utilize the full powers of rule #21. If that is the case, why not change it. It leaves a terrible impression about the motivations and potential activities of the auction house. It makes me very uncomfortable bidding in their auctions.
JimB
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