OMG, what the heck was going on with the bidders in Bruce's auction tonight? Looking atones I was bidding heavy and ones I had decided to let go.
It seemed to me that a large percentage of the actions went into extended time. I saw a couple of items where the bidder waited until 10 seconds left and then put in a bid bump of $10. When that didn't work, they waited 4 minutes and bumped it another $10.
Don't these bidders understand the concept of extended time proxy bidding? The top bid shown is unlikely to be the max bid at that point, and bidding it up $10 simply extends the bidding by another 5 minutes for no purpose. I really wish Bruce's rules didn't extend bidding unless the new bid was enough to change high bidder. Grrr.
I must admit I am some upset because one of these clowns took a poster where my max bid was about 40% over the proxy bid at the 5 minute mark and kept raising it 6 times over the next 30 minutes until he beat me down. I try to be a reasonable and courteous bidder. I know I will get outbid sometimes and accept that. But this micky mouse kaka really pissed me off.
BTW, it wasn't just that bid. Way too much went 2-4 rounds into extended bidding tonight.
I had one of those idiots go after an item I wanted a few auctions ago. He did it three or four times, and then I stopped watching. I checked after the auction was over and I had won it, and he did it 12 times, all within 10 seconds of the end of the item. Can't figure out why, so I call it pure stupidity.
T
I guess I should defend myself here as an “idiot” because I do this “stupidity” all the time. Let’s say you have 3 posters you want in an auction, A, B and C. You’ve budgeted at $150 overall but don’t know how high the posters will go for various reasons. If you put in a max bid at $50 each on A, B, and C, you are quickly outbid and you get nothing. You can’t put a max of 100 or 150 on each because you run the risk of blowing the bank altogether, e.g. let’s say you win all 3 at $133, $140 and $125, you’ve just spent $398!
So yes you have to play out one auction at a time, and keep doing so until you can land (possibly) one of the posters safely within more or less your price range. When the posters are all closing within minutes (or seconds) of each other, it gets even more tricky. So in short, your purchasing poster A, B or C are entirely interrelated, and (real) time bound. Another variable is that you always go over your budget (we all do, right?) so the $150 you started with may actually become 175 or $200 “in the heat of the moment”, which means, yes, you bump up the bid to see if your “last I swear THE LAST” increment will be the one to make the difference.
There’s also the fact that you can play this AGAINST someone who is also in a somewhat similar situation (e.g chasing different posters closing at different times, but also only able to afford a limited number) I know this because 1- I’ve done it, but also because 2- its happened to me. Imagine the above described scenario, but when you are chasing 10, or 20 posters... 5 minutes goes by real fast and next thing you know, by the time you get back to one particular poster, the bloody auction has closed. That is why I bid when only 5 minutes + 3 seconds left, so it doesn't get sent to extended time, and I might catch the other guy off guard and snag it from right under his nose.
All this to say its a bit more nuanced than that fellas. Glad I could enlighten you.
Besides, if you guys are putting your high bid in and going to bed, why is it so irritating that it goes to extended time a few times?
