On line bidding strategy

I am bidding on a motorcycle as part of an estate sale. I bid early on and then left it but kept an eye on the bids. It closes this evening and I would kind of like to win. I could bid to my max now and see how it plays out, or spend some time watching and bidding at the very end. I do not do on line auctions very often and I am not sure if there is anything to be gained by holding off to the end. It seems like if I bid to my max early it gives others (43 bids so a fair bit of interest) time to reconsider their max bid. So the question is: bid to my max and stop looking, or follow the last few minutes and wait till then to swoop in. 

Is this proxy bidding?  

If Proxy you can bid a max of $5,000 and the auction will only take from you the max it has to.  So, if the other guy bids $3,800 then you might be the winner at $3,900 even though your max willing to spend was $5,000.  

If it is not proxy bidding bidding $5,000 assures that you really will be spending $5,000 and the next guy has to bid $5,100 to get it from you.  But, yes, you are giving that other guy a long time to decide if he wants to spend $5,100

Either way, I recommend bidding late, like in the last minutes.  

Ebay is proxy bidding.  Bring a Trailer is not. 

In reply to John Welsh :

It is proxy bidding, yes. 

Okay, proxy.  My salvage auctions are this way too.  I would throw in your biggest number at the last moments.  This limits the other guys amount of time to reconsider spending more.  

Some auctions are setup to stay open for some period of time after the last increased bid was received.

So, the site may say the auction ends at 5:00 PM but if a new increased bid is received at 4:59, the auction may stay open until 5:09 for example and keep adding time until no new increased bids are received.

I'm no expert on this but I'm starting to get up to speed as I missed out on a super sweet 1984 RX-7 GSL-SE last week that sold for $22,000...I would have paid high 20's if the timing was right.

My strategy is always to enter my maximum bid as late as possible in the auction, ideally the last ~60 seconds or so.

You want to take advantage of the fact that people are busy and not every bidder is following the auction down to the wire. If you enter your max bid too early, that gives your competition plenty of time to respond. If you enter it in the last ~60 seconds, your competition might be driving or in a work meeting or whatever, and simply not have the ability to both evaluate their budget and make another bid before the auction closes.

In reply to RX Reven' :

Agreed, your scenerio might give the other guy another 10 minutes to reconsider.  But 10 minutes is a lot less than giving the other guy 5 DAYS to reconsider by bidding really early.  

I ask myself, "what is the max this is worth to me?"  and arrive at a number.  I then ask, "at what price will I be pissed that I didn't go higher?"  I now know my max-max number.  I bid that price in as late as reasonably possible.  Even if the auction is only at $750 in those last minutes, I still put in my max-max of $5,200.  More times than not, I might win in the mid $3k range.   If the sale ends at $5,300 and someone else winning, I'm okay with that becuase $5,000 was all I really wanted to spend and $5,300 even exceeded my max-max.  

The nice thing about proxy bidding is you can determine the MAX you will want to spend and just bid that.  If no one bids it up, you bid will only be a bit above the next highest bid.  You can still get a great buy.

E.g. you bid $5000 when the auction is at $500 and the bit goes to $600 (or whatever their increment is) and you have the high bid.  Someone else bids $1200 at the very last second, you your bid goes to $1300.  No need to wait to snipe, just put your max.

The only disadvantage I can see to just putting your max in is if someone want to F with you and drive you up to your max and having the bid sitting there gives them a long time to do that.  Of course, they don't know what your max is, and they may end up paying more then they want.

Not putting your max bid may keep the bid low until the end, but it seems like that would just encourage more bidding, which you don't want.

If you are paranoid about someone (seller pumping up price, which is not allowed), just put your max in the last hour and not worry about it.

The other piece of advice is, "know/understand the fees."  A lot of estate auctions might have a 12% buyers fee.  This means $1,000 bid is really $1,120 coming out of your pocket.  Factor those fees into your max-max.  

Also look out for shipping costs. I was burned a new one a few years ago on a print I bought at auction.  I got it at a good price. Outrageous shipping change my cost to about current market price.

In reply to aircooled :

This is not my experience at all. When I put my max proxy bid in early in the auction, I often lose. When I put that same number in right at the end of the auction, I often win.

Showing your hand by entering your max bid too early shows that there is going to be competition for an item. If it's just you and one or two other people interested in an item, you are more or less signaling "hey, be prepared to fight for this, you're not the only one here."

By waiting until the last possible moment, you can often take advantage of a false sense of security. If someone is unchallenged early on in the bidding process, or handily overtakes another low bidder early on, they will often just assume they are going to win and not pay very close attention to the auction. The key is to take advantage of that lack of attention to beat their highest bid while leaving them somewhere around 30-45 seconds to respond (not feasible for many).

Occasionally, I see an item that I'm interested in but the highest bid so far, is way beyond what I'm willing to pay. It drives me away. In that case, a high bid early works. But I garuntee, there's a guy willing to bid a little bit higher in the last minute or two, so I almost never bid high early. Why show your hand?

I think there is another psychological effect.  We tend to think the other guy knows something we don't.  

If the price stays low on an item, it is common to think, "oh, there must be something wrong with it" and the bidding stays low as others shy from it too.    

If the price jumps quickly, it is common to think, "oh, this must be really valuable."  and bid on it so it doesn't get away from you.  This can lead to bidding far past it's worth.  

So, a early big bid may make the item seem really desirable.  

I am in the "max-max" camp in the last minute or two.  I won a car on eBay when bidding ended $2500 (roughly $25k car) below my max-max.  It was quite a feeling being prepared to spend more and then winning at a "bargain" price.  Good luck!

Remember, the world is full of people with more money than sense. If I really care about the outcome, I'll place just one bid in only the last few seconds. 

I am bidding on an older Goldwing. They are not uncommon and I based my price on what I can get something similar for locally. So not a lot of emotion, but I have been following this one now for ten days and I feel somewhat invested, and its nice and close.  I will go with my common sense and bid at the last minute. 

Make an low early bid as a placeholder , then most of the auctions send you emails  / text messages to remind you when it's getting close to the end. , 

in the last minute or two if it's a proxy bid throw your top number and watch where it goes.

as said earlier watch for the fees.....

you have no control over the other high bidders ,  they could have bid $1000 more than you , but it looks like you lost by $20 and it makes you sad !

Good Luck

I am bidding on this guy.

F-191: 1983 Honda Gold Wing Interstate Touring Motorcycle (bcsurplus.com)

Almost certainly will need the carbs scrubbing out and maybe a new timing belt but I expect the rest of it is probably pretty decent. 

What is it worth? I figure 1500 to 2000 on Craigslist and I will have to pay the premium (15 per cent) and spend a little money. But a CL bike will need the same money spent less the premium. 

Only 6 hours, 15 minutes left and currently $875.  The listing hints that previous inspection is possible but maybe not in 6 hours to go.  

Remember that more than half of the bidders are there for resale and as such, they will have to buy it cheap enough to make the numbers work.  If you are in it for actually keeping it, get your bid closer to retail and you could be the winner at the price where wholesale ends (but still less than retail.)  Still hit the auction with your max-max, late.  For the next 6 hours, just watch.  

Are you fully registered to bid on this site?  If you are unsure, throw in a small dollar test bid right now.  

Ainti-snipping equals 1 minuted added for bid placed in last minute.  

The FAQs of the site say: 

BC Surplus using software that more closely matches a "LIVE AUCTION".  If the high bidder or user changes in the final closing minute, our software will extend the closing time by resetting the clock to ONE MINUTE.  Most auction sites call this "anti-sniping" but we consider it to more closely emulate a real auction, since an auctioneer does not stop the bidding at a specific time - he stops the bidding when the bidders are finished bidding. 

 I recommend you put in your max-max with 1 minute and 10 seconds remaining.  Anything after 1 minute will give others another minute to review.  But, generally, adding just one minute is inconsequential. 

Appleseed said:

Occasionally, I see an item that I'm interested in but the highest bid so far, is way beyond what I'm willing to pay. It drives me away. In that case, a high bid early works. But I garuntee, there's a guy willing to bid a little bit higher in the last minute or two, so I almost never bid high early. Why show your hand?

I think it's a balancing act. Bid early enough to make it obvious that there's enough interest in it to discourage anyone who thinks they're going to swoop in at the last minute and score a great deal, but wait until the end for the big bids enough to catch the other serious people off guard. I don't do much with true auctions but I won an ebay auction last week. I went in a bit early, largely just to assess interest level and see if it was even worth paying attention to for the next few days. When I wasn't immediately outbid I knew it was worth sticking with. Then I ramped up as slowly as I could to stay on top the rest of the way though. There was some bidding activity in the closing hours, but the last bid (me) was about three hours before the end, which surprised me a little. the auction end was dead in the middle of a weekday though, so that may have been a factor.

In reply to John Welsh :

Thanks for that!

It's an Interstate, not an Aspencade so less stuff.

No digital dash, no big, vented brakes, no armchair for the pillion, no onboard air compressor.

Don't pay too much, I gave $2000 for a great running Aspencade with only 30,000 km and a recent timing belt change a couple years ago.

In reply to ShawnG :

I prefer the simpler version. My ride will just be 50 mile round trip to the gym every day. But it sounds like you got a deal. 

I won for $1191.40 including taxes and commission. There were a bunch of newer Harley police bikes that got all the attention so I figure I saved a couple hundred dollars.