Heritage Auctions - Boston Garters

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

The last point is interesting. Is that because there are guys like Powell who just bid on the set side who otherwise would be pumping up the individual lots in an effort to win them all?

Yes, exactly. It doesn't benefit the consigner at all, in this case, to offer the set separately. It can only hurt them because all competitive set buyers would still bid their maximums in aggregate across the 12 lots, but they could get shut out if they only bid on one side and run out of competition on their side to keep them in the running with the other side.

In practice, it's more a convenience to set bidders than it is a bid maximization tool for the consigners, at least with a set this small where bidding both sides is easy to manage. If it were 1952 Topps, then ensuring you are the high bidder on each individual lot is much more challenging, and would result in most set bidders not wanting to bid that way. So offering both makes some sense there because it's very unlikely you're getting bidders to try to win every single lot otherwise. But in that case, you'd definitely want to allow set bidders to outbid the aggregate singles lots even if there is only one set bidder remaining. This allowance would make the "bid both sides" strategy pointless, and should have been implemented in this auction. But it wasn't. Hence the need to bid both sides.

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Yes, exactly. It doesn't benefit the consigner at all, in this case, to offer the set separately. It can only hurt them because all competitive set buyers would still bid their maximums in aggregate across the 12 lots, but they could get shut out if they only bid on one side and run out of competition on their side to keep them in the running with the other side.

In practice, it's more a convenience to set bidders than it is a bid maximization tool for the consigners, at least with a set this small where bidding both sides is easy to manage. If it were 1952 Topps, then ensuring you are the high bidder on each individual lot is much more challenging, and would result in most set bidders not wanting to bid that way. So offering both makes some sense there because it's very unlikely you're getting bidders to try to win every single lot otherwise. But in that case, you'd definitely want to allow set bidders to outbid the aggregate singles lots even if there is only one set bidder remaining. This allowance would make the "bid both sides" strategy pointless, and should have been implemented in this auction. But it wasn't. Hence the need to bid both sides.

Even for a set this small, it can be more than just a convenience to set bidders to allow them to bid on the set as an individual lot; it can be the prerequisite to bid at all. And I'll take my case in this auction to make the point. I bid on only the set, and if not allowed to do that, I would not have bid at all. To me it was all or none; if I could not have the full set, I was not interested. I had a limit in my mind as to how high I would go. Think now about the alternative I would have been faced with if I had to bid on the cards individually. In order to remain high bidder on each individual card to remain in the running to win all 12, I could have been forced to raise my bid on an individual card to remain high bidder on that card, but by so doing I would exceed my limit for the set. And if I didn't raise it, I could end up winning all the other cards in the set. Either situation would not work for me, and as a result I would not bid at all.

To go further, besides the advantage offering the set as an individual lot offers to a bidder such as me, it has no down-side to the consigner. It brings more bidders in (in this example, me) thus creating the possibility for the aggregate of the 12 cards to be higher than it would otherwise be. And if done properly, no bidder on an individual card would run out of competition because once he saw that the set price exceeded the total of the individual cards, the effect was he had been outbid on that card and would have known he had to raise his bid. And that is exactly what we saw here. Powell stated that if allowed to, he would have raised his bid, and depending on how high he was willing to go, could have raised the set price to a level that exceeded what the individual cards ended up selling for, thereby netting more for the consigner. And if the cycle repeated itself, more money would flow to the consigner.

[jayshum]

Most of the focus has been on the full set lot closing so Powell couldn't raise his bid on it once the total of the individual lots went above it, but even if the lot stayed open, he may not have been able to raise his bid because he was bidding against himself.

Wouldn't the same thing have happened with the individual lots? If the high bid for the total set lot had been higher then the combined total of the individual lots, if someone was the high bidder on one of the individual lots and wanted to increase their bid so the individual lots total was higher, they probably wouldn't have been able to either because they would also be bidding against themselves.

I've never bid in auctions like this but several have commented about other AHs running similar types of auctions. Apparently, those have had all the lots linked together to show whether the set or the individual lots were ahead and everything stayed open until none of the lots had bids for a period of time, but how did they handle the issue of a current high bidder increasing their bid on an individual lot or the total set lot to change which side was winning? Were bidders able to increase their own high bid or did they have to talk to someone at the AH to get it done for them?

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by jayshum

I've never bid in auctions like this but several have commented about other AHs running similar types of auctions. Apparently, those have had all the lots linked together to show whether the set or the individual lots were ahead and everything stayed open until none of the lots had bids for a period of time, but how did they handle the issue of a current high bidder increasing their bid on an individual lot or the total set lot to change which side was winning? Were bidders able to increase their own high bid or did they have to talk to someone at the AH to get it done for them?

If the software was set up properly, they would have been able to increase their own bids without contacting the AH.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by benjulmag

If the software was set up properly, they would have been able to increase their own bids without contacting the AH.

Bingo. If Heritage allowed for “straight bids” instead of just “max bids”, then Powell could have kept bidding against himself and theoretically kept the set lot open. Or at least unilaterally raised the price on the set lot. Without that option, he was at the mercy of having a dance partner to keep bidding against him on the set lot, thereby enabling the set lot to keep rising in price above the price at which the individual lots were closing in the aggregate.

Some AHs, but not all, do allow for straight bids.

So I suppose there’s another strategy to take here if you only want to bid on the full set. Enter into an alliance with a buddy who will keep bidding against you on the set side so that you don’t get locked out. Just make sure you have a safe word for when it’s time to tap out!

[oldjudge]

One thing that hasn't been discussed but I wonder about is what if, when Powell was the high bidder but before he was locked out, he had put in say an $800k limit bid. My guess is that the auction software would have still recorded him as the winner than night, but what would HA have done the next morning when the dust settled? His high bid on the auction program would have been unchanged (since no one outbid him on the aggregate lot) but by his limit bid he expressed a willingness to bid higher than the sum of the individual bids. Would he have been declared the winner at one increment over the sum of the individual bids or would his limit bid have been ignored since it was never executed by the auction software? If he had done that he would have had even a stronger case to be the winner. BTW, this is just after the fact pontificating; I am not saying that Powell should have realized this at the time.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

One thing that hasn't been discussed but I wonder about is what if, when Powell was the high bidder but before he was locked out, he had put in say an $800k limit bid. My guess is that the auction software would have still recorded him as the winner than night, but what would HA have done the next morning when the dust settled? His high bid on the auction program would have been unchanged (since no one outbid him on the aggregate lot) but by his limit bid he expressed a willingness to bid higher than the sum of the individual bids. Would he have been declared the winner at one increment over the sum of the individual bids or would his limit bid have been ignored since it was never executed by the auction software? If he had done that he would have had even a stronger case to be the winner. BTW, this is just after the fact pontificating; I am not saying that Powell should have realized this at the time.

In that scenario awfully hard for Heritage to say he didn't win.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

One thing that hasn't been discussed but I wonder about is what if, when Powell was the high bidder but before he was locked out, he had put in say an $800k limit bid. My guess is that the auction software would have still recorded him as the winner than night, but what would HA have done the next morning when the dust settled? His high bid on the auction program would have been unchanged (since no one outbid him on the aggregate lot) but by his limit bid he expressed a willingness to bid higher than the sum of the individual bids. Would he have been declared the winner at one increment over the sum of the individual bids or would his limit bid have been ignored since it was never executed by the auction software? If he had done that he would have had even a stronger case to be the winner. BTW, this is just after the fact pontificating; I am not saying that Powell should have realized this at the time.

As I understand it, the mechanics here are simple. Perhaps excessively simple given the stakes.

Wait until all lots are closed. Then add up the final price on all the individual lots. Compare it to the final price on the set lot. Whichever is highest, wins.

If accurate, then putting in a higher max bid doesn’t do any good, unless someone actually triggers it by bidding against you ON YOUR SPECIFIC LOT.

Edited to add the all caps bit.