The old Winecommune sometimes would put 5 minutes from last bid before closing an auction.
I guess from a sellers perspective it was advantageous but eliminated sniping.
There’s this school of impaired thought that says, “just max bid the max you’re willing to spend and let the chips fall as they may.”
That completely disregards human nature. The amount we’re willing to spend is fluid and context-dependent. If you get involved in a bidding war, you’re gonna get annoyed and probably bid up the price a bit before you decide it’s no longer worth it.
I lose bids by $5-10 because someone bids up my max bid price. When I bid and immediately am outbid by whoever came before me with a high max bid, I might try once or twice more. This sort of thinking bids up the price. If you do it days/hours before the auction ends, then there’s more time for the price to escalate. If you snipe, the end price is far more likely to be lower because of the avoidance of a bidding war.
Noah - thank you, and I agree. I have used the ‘just put in my max price early on and let the chips fall where they may’ strategy. And then still gotten involved in even higher competitive last minute bidding. What can I say, other than “I’m human and not as rational as I wish I might be?”
Very rarely do I regret that (say, purely hypothetical) bottle of '95 Mugneret Gibourg for which I paid $27 more than my purely rational limit.
Back to the original subject: I’ve seen Zachy’s site crap out in the last few minutes of an online auction multiple times. In each case I was watching carefully to place last minute bids. The bids didn’t get placed, the sniper was defeated. And I’m paying a lot less attention to Zachys because of it.
Maybe the lack of sniping decrease the selling price on so many lots that it will decrease the average auction value of the wines causing global panic and a huge sell-off in the wine market creating a buyers market and then maybe some of those bottles passed around and around in that system, always remaining corked, will finally be uncorked and, gasp, consumed. for those of you that need help with humor.
If you snipe, the end price is far more likely to be lower because of the avoidance of a bidding war
Not always. In order to be successful with a snipe, you need to enter a higher bid than what you assume is the current high bid. Sometimes the current high is higher than you think and your snipe pops the ending price much higher than you desire. That is how some items sell for way over the anticipated price.
This is exactly why sniping works. If you’re willing to pay more, just bid higher.
In addition, you’re confusing winning bids with highest bids. The reason you lose by one increment is that you were the second-highest bidder. You have no idea how high the winner bid.
I get that. Same goes for Craig G. I am not confusing winning bid and highest bid, thanks.
The phenomenon I find is that, let’s take Bottle A that’s probably “worth” $150 if you bought it retail. Opening bid is $70 and the auction is 5 days away. You bid $70 and a day later someone bids it up. Maybe they have a max of $140. You then start trying to win it back and suddenly the price creeps towards the current max bid. Then suddenly at auction end, it’s $140, maybe more if people co tonite to bid.
If no one bids at the outset, and the price stays at $70 with no bids, it’s far more likely that someone will put a lowball bid on it towards the end of the auction as opposed to a $140 max bid with the expectation of it being bid up. Then you might attempt a snipe and maybe win it at $80 a bottle instead of $140. If you snipe at $80 and lose then the other guy at least wins it at $85 and not $140. Big win for him.
This is human behavior. Our inherent acquisitiveness and competitiveness pushes up bids. All buyers lose.
I agree with what you wrote above. I have watched and participated in so many online auctions, I have seen a lot of interesting things.
Early bidding is problematic on many levels. For the early bidder it creates the expectation that the bottle is theirs and thus they bid higher to “keep it” when outbid. If someone out bids them early, they then end up bidding against themselves to stay high bidder and auction fever sets in and you bid more than you really wanted. The most awesome cases are when the opening or currently high bid is actually quite a bit higher, but the sniper wants to be sure to get the bottle so they enter an abnormally high bid “just to be sure” and the price jumps way outside what it should be. I’ve seen that a few times as well.
Exactly. +1.
Lots of immediate buyer’s remorse after that two seconds of, “Screw them, I got it!”. I’ve got enough wine at this point to keep me going through my eventual dotage, and I’m only 40…
Or simply because someone had a budget for the auction and were outbid on some other lots which freed up money to place higher bids on a smaller number of lots.