I don’t know what he meant, but he said that “you wouldn’t be able to have the same max bid.” In fact (I believe), you would be able to have the same max bid and the earlier of the two would win.
That does not appear to be how K&L does it. The later bidder has to beat all “disclosed” bids by the increment, but that does not apply to undisclosed bids. See this lot which as I read it shows a later bid winning by $1, which is pretty crazy.
In the KL auction that you link to, I expect that the winning bidder put in a max bid greater than the closing price and the system automatically raised their bid only enough to beat the second highest bid by $1.
That’s not correct either and easier to see in plenty of auctions if you look around their site (edited to add link below).
On the auction I linked to, the italics show that the (undiclosed) max bid of the earlier bidder was $681. At that price point, the increment is $25, so if the $681 were disclosed, the next minimum bid would be $706. Had the later bidder bid any amount $706 or higher, their new bid would have shown as $706 because of the bid increment. K&L will always outbid the prior max by the bid increment if the new bid’s max is high enough to exceed the increment. The only way it would show the later bidder at a number less than $706 is if the later bidder’s max was less than $706, but still more than the undisclosed max of the prior high bidder. In this case, the later bidder’s max happened to be $1 more than the prior bidder’s max. Pretty crazy as I noted initially.
Here’s one that illustrates this point. Lots of “italic” bids (meaning that the bid in italics was a previously undisclosed max bid). Almost every time, the next bid above the italic bid exceeds the italic bid by the exact amount of the bid increment. This tells you that the higher bid had enough of a max to exceed the prior max bid by at least the increment but K&L’s system placed the bid at just the increment. But a couple of times, the delta is less than the increment, such as when it went from $444 to $448 and when it went from $500 to $508. Those were instances where the new high bidder’s max exceeded the prior max bid by less than the increment and they allow it because the prior max bid was undisclosed when the later bid was placed, and the later bid exceeded the disclosed portion of the prior max bid by at least the increment.
Looking again, it seems that the top two bids were submitted simultaneously, were both above the prior max bid by more than the increment, and the higher bid (by $1) won.
The second bid was placed on Feb. 15. It showed publicly as $655, which is exactly the $25 increment above $630.
The next bid shown in the history is in italics and bears the exact same time stamp as the $655 bid. That tells us that this is not actually a new bidder, but rather is an auto-bid placed by the system on behalf of the second bidder because the second bidder had a higher max bid than the $655 previously shown (this is what the italics mean and the time stamp confirms). This bid topped out at the amount shown - $681.
The next bid shown in the history was placed on Feb. 16. This is the third bidder, and shows as $682. This was the bid that triggered the auto-bid in italics. At the time this bid was placed, the high bid was showing as $655. So this person had to bid at least $680 - the $655 plus the $25 increment. Had he or she bid that $680, the auto-bid of the second bidder would have hit at $681 and the third bidder would have lost by $1 (this was a last-second bid, so no time to fix). But the bid was instead $682, winning by $1. Had the second bidder put in a $683 or higher max instead of $681, again, the second bidder would have won.
So three bids were submitted, none of them simultaneously, but the second bid and the second bidder’s later auto-bid both bear the same time stamp because they were submitted as one bid with a max higher than the bid required by the increment.
Here’s the illustration which helps:
$630 is bidder 1 on Feb. 9
$655 is bidder 2 on Feb. 15
$681 is bidder 2’s Feb. 15 bid being auto-increased (note the italics and same time-stamp) because a) he or she put in a max bid higher than $655, and b) a later bid came along and triggered that max bid.
$682 is bidder 3 on Feb. 16, the bid that triggered the auto-increase in bidder 2’s bid but just got lucky enough to beat it by $1.
