Winning the Auction Game
It's easy to win at an Auction!
You just have to bid more than anyone else did.
...but the point of an auction - if you are the buyer - is to come away with the goods at the lowest possible price!
That's the challenge: whether you're in the auction for fun, trying to make a little money on the side, or looking to seriously boost your income.
So a little bit of planning goes a long way and can save you money. In this section we raise some of the key issues for you to think about.
It's like planning a war.
Bid Fever
You only have to watch the antics in the stock market when there's a take-over in train, to see silly prices being bid when ‘matcho’ chief executives catch bid fever
You only have to read the papers 12 months later to see the repercussions.
- The timing of the bids, how they start slowly and hot up as the end of the auction approaches
- How new bidders appear in the last few hours: where have they been all this time?
- Bidding wars, where two or more bidders get so involved with their bidding that they loose sight of the real value of the item.
- See which bidder you most admire and observe his style.
Be warned!
- Prepare for action
- Spot an interesting auction.
- Decide how much you are willing to pay for an item before you get involved,
- Write down that price and the closing date of the auction in your diary and make sure you're around as the auction closes so you can watch the action closely.
- Stay out of sight. Take no part in the initial stages of the bidding. See how and when the bids fall and who is bidding.
- Know your enemy
- Use the 'Find a Member' facility to learn as much as you can about other bidders. Are they organisations or individuals? are they regulars or newcomers like you?
- Watch their bidding patterns: do they bid in the mornings, the evenings, by how much do they raise the bid.
- It's all in the timing
- Your objective it to be highest bidder - but a small margin - as the bidding closes. It doesn't matter who was highest bidder ten minutes or three days before.
- Early high bids only raise the eventual price
- Towards the end of the bidding enter your own first bid. See what the reaction is. Try to measure the state of the competition.
- Keep your powder dry for the final show-down!
- Closing out the bid
- If you're still in the running - ie the price is still below the price you noted at the outset - place your maximum bid hours before the closing and use the Proxy Bidder to ratchet up your bids by the bidding increment as other bids come in
- Make your maximum bid an irregular amount ($10.23), you may well win by those few odd cents.
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