What is a buyer’s premium?
A buyer’s premium is a percentage-based fee added to the winning hammer price. This helps cover the auctioneer’s expenses and administrative costs and off-sets credit card fees. Bidders may also be charged sales tax on this additional fee. For example, if a buyer’s premium is 20% and you win an item with a bid of $50, you would pay an additional $10, making your total payment $60 plus sales tax.
What is extended bidding?
The auction platforms we use (and most auction house’s use) features extended bidding (a.k.a. “soft closing”). The system will automatically extend the closing time of a lot (auction item) whenever a bid is placed within the last five minutes of its scheduled closing. This may occur multiple times on any given lot depending on the bidder interest in that lot. Once all interest and bidding in a lot ceases, the clock will run out and the lot will close.
This is the fairest way to prevent “bid sniping” (someone submitting a high bid in the last seconds of any given lot’s closing in order to win said lot) and to give all bidders an opportunity to increase their bids if they wish. It is also the closest way to mimic a live, in-person auction, when the auctioneer gives bidders opportunities to increase their bids if someone jumps into the bidding at the last moment before hammering the winning bid.
Sometimes I’m immediately outbid. Why?
Because all maximum bids are “masked” (hidden from other bidders), you do not know what any other bidder’s maximum bid may be or when they placed it. Sometimes you will be outbid as soon as you enter your bid. This only occurs when another bidder had a higher maximum bid than yours already “on the board”. Your bid set in motion the automatic bidding system which raised the other buyer’s bid above yours. The other bidder may have placed their max bid days, hours, or even seconds before you placed yours.
However, if you place a bid and there are no competing bids against your bid, the system WILL NOT immediately go to your maximum bid. In fact, if you are the only bidder by the time the lot closes, you will win the lot for the lowest possible dollar amount (based on whatever the opening bid was for that item), not your max bid. So if you place a max bid of $25 on a lot with an opening bid of $5 and there are no other bidders vying for that lot, you will win it for $5. NOTE: This only happens when there are no competing bids.
My max bid was the same as the winning bid (tie bid), yet someone else won it. Why?
In the case of a tie bid, the hammer will always fall to the first bidder. For example, the current bid is $50 (placed by someone else). What you don’t know is that their max bid (which is masked from other bidders) is $200. You join the bidding and and place a maximum bid of $200 and are immediately outbid in favor of the other bidder. Even though two people have the same max bid, only one person can win the lot. That is automatically determined by bidding order — the person who placed that maximum bid first.
I won an item in an auction, what now?
Within two hours of the close of the entire auction your credit card on file will be charged for the entire amount due (hammer price + buyers premium + sales tax). The charges are not processed until the entire auction closes. You will also receive a winning bidder email which will list your invoice (what item(s) you won, the hammer price, sales tax, and buyers premium) and all necessary pick-up, shipping, and delivery instructions. The pick-up instructions are also always viewable on the auction landing page.