Heritage Exclusive Internet Auction(Updated)
merz2
Posts: 2,474 ✭
Something seems funny.I had bid on a 1954 PR68 RD Lincoln Proof,to complete my Registry Set.It stayed $261 with BP until thelast minutes.Them it doubled to my Bid with the BP and it says I lost.Sounds like the owner bid against me,knowing my bid or had someone do it for him.Or did Heritage do it?Any opinions?
Don
Registry 1909-1958 Proof Lincolns
Registry 1909-1958 Proof Lincolns
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Sounds like a sniper.
Registry 1909-1958 Proof Lincolns
Edited to add: BTW I have a ridiculously high bid in on an IHC on their Long Beach auction. If hits my maximum, I know there will be something fishy.
TRUTH
If that is what happened,believe me they will hear from me.I'll raise such a stink,you'll all smell it.I'll be watching their sit for it to appear.You can believe that.
The more I think about it,the more I think your right about it.Heritage knows the max bid.and bid it to retain the coin.Would I have any recourse,need advice from you legal eagles out there.
Registry 1909-1958 Proof Lincolns
Looking for PCGS AU58 Washington's, 32-63.
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I have looked at the results, and do not understand why you weren't the high bidder and the winner. I am theorizing that it may be stupidity rather than dishonesty on the part of Heritage.
Perhaps their program works like this:
Say that towards the end of the auction you are high at $425 with a max bid of $500. Someone (call him Joe) bids $500 at the last minute. The program says OK I'll up Don's $425 to $450 for Joe. Then it ups Joe's $450 to $475 for Don. Next, it ups Don's $475 to $500 for Joe, and since you're max is $500 it leaves it at Joe's $500 and he is declared the winner.
If their program works like that, it is 100% INCORRECT and I think you should raise a big stink about it. The first one who entered the $500 bid should be declared the winner in the situation I described.
I've found bugs in the Heritage Internet Bidding program about a year ago, so it is entirely possible that this is just a progrtamming error, more precisely called a PROGRAMMER'S ERROR. If so, Heritage should reverse the result and award you the coin.
Gerry
Don
The same thing hapened to me.I bid $555 on the 1973 s at
10:57 pm est or 9:57 mt.
We were sniped.I spoke to the webmaster named Brian Shipman at Heritage. I had my computer screen open and when the board said Auction over,I was the high bidder.I went to bed smiling that I won the lot.Brian apologized because I did not even get an outbid notice.He further went on to say the reason I had trouble uploading my bids in the last 30 minutes was because I have AOL as my server.
Did you know that the exclusively internet Auction is also a phone auction.Yep,Brian gave me a phone # to call if I want to go that route.
We need an anti - sniper guide I'm also pissed off!!!!!!
Let's all call Greg Rohan and complain !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stewart
same prob. w/ teletrade, that the 2 companies allow sellers to buy back their own coins. it is a despicable practice in my opinoin, and is yet ANOTHER reason that prices on moderns are, imo heavily overinflated.
this one goes back to my old adage "buy coins SIGHT-SEEN". you will do far better at a live auction than these"exclusive internet only" DECEPTIVE venues.
K S
I have thought about your situation and have a possible explanation. You placed your maximum bid which does not show on the public screen. What shows is the bid below you. Bidders do not know where you are and they may bid the next increment allowed and if below your maximum secret bid they are told they are outbid, try the next increment or what ever they wish their maximum bid to be. If they persist in increments they eventually reach your bid. When someone submits a higher maximum bid , your bid shows as the bid on the screen as you are now the next highest bidder. If you go to "my bids" screen , it shows where you stand. Call them and ask them but I think this may be correct.
Regarding the consignor bidding; it is a reserve type deal that assures maximum return to the auction house.
K S
I would like to clarify this post as much as possible. Please feel free to email me privately or post here with related comments or if you need for information.
1) As with any internet auction, sniping is possible.
2) We discontinued extended bidding (10 minute rule) several months ago. All lots end exactly when they say they will end with no extension.
3) All consignor reserves are posted no later than 72 hours before the end of the auction. The final three days of the auction is free of any consignor input.
4) Heritage does not - and I wouldn't work here if they did - manipulate the bids in any way. That would be pure shill. Unethical. Illegal. We undergo a full audit every year and our bidding practices are included.
I manage the bidding system on-line. I see every bid placed, when it's placed, who places it, etc. You are welcome to contact me at any time about any lot to discuss what happened if and when you feel anything is awry. I will give you a straight answer.
Thanks, and please let me know if I can do anything else to help.
CIO
Heritagecoin.com
Thank you for joining this thread and making a number of important points about Heritage auctions - your points are expressed well and they put to rest a number of unwarranted allegations about how Heritage internet auctions operate, which were digressions from the point of the original thread anyway. However, your comments are general and do not address that original question, as posed by Don Merz with regard to Lot 15191 in your most recent internet auction.
Let me state the facts as I have pieced them together, so that if my basic facts and assumptions are not correct you can reply by correcting it:
1) Well before the end of the auction, Don Merz placed a max bid of $500 and for a period of time - a day or two or three - he was high bidder at $225.
2) Towards the end of the auction, a sniper (whoever he was) placed a max bid of $500 and wound up being the high bid.
3) Now max bids are handled by some computer procedure that you have programmed, and that procedure (INCORRECTLY in my opinion) gave the sniper's max bid preference over the Merz max bid, even though the latter bid was entered earlier.
4) If these facts are correct, then I respectfully submit that there is something wrong with your procedures for handling max bids - perhaps it is as simple as a computer error and not a conceptual error. Under any other auction system that I am aware of (Teletrade, eBay, live auctions, etc.) Merz would have been declared the winner.
Perhaps my assumption that the sniper entered ONLY a max bid of $500 is incorrect. If he entered a higher max bid, then I could understand him being declared the winner, but not at $500 - the concluding bid should have been $525 plus the vig. In other words, once Merz entered a $500 max bid, that bidding level should have belonged to him exclusively, and that did not seem to happen.
I hope there is a satisfactory explanation, and several of us, especially Don Merz, would like to have it. Thanks in advance.
Thank you for posting. But I cannot accept your explanations in entirety. I have bid on several Heritage exclusively internet auctions in the past and was high bidder until the last few minutes, only to lose by one increment. The the coins I lost magically appeared on Heritage's website as a new purchase. These were Heritage coins to begin with, why not sell them at the high bid? Why buy them back? This happened with such frequency, that I no longer bid on the Exclusively Internet auctions. These examples are not exclusive to me and give the impression that Heritage does INDEED manipulate these auctions. I firmly believe this and I am justfied in saying so.
If Heritage really wants to be of clean hands, it should have a policy whereby Heritage CANNOT bid on any coins in ANY of it's auctions, whether they own the coins or not.
TRUTH
The problem is that once someone else bids $100, your are out of the auction since your actual bid is $90 and your max has been reached by another bidder and the next bid back to you would be $110. So when you place a max bid there is a chance that the highest bid that will actually be enetered on your behalf will be one bid increment lower and a subsequent bidder can win by bidding your max amount. This is explained somewhere in the on-line bidding rules or FAQ.
I agree that it would be better if your earlier max bid at $100 took precedence over the later bid at the same price.
However, on 2 occasions bidding on B&M auctions in the past 3 months, I have been hosed by the auction house. In both instances, I was the high bidder going onto the floor (held in conjunction with E-Bay) and in each case, there were no E-Bay bids and no live bids at the auction, but B&M went ahead and bid closer to my max bid and ending up trying to let me "win" at a price that was about 15% higher than the last honest bid. In both cases, I let them have a piece of my mind and paid the lower bid that went to the floor instead of the inflated bids.
IMHO, it is not proper or ethical to honor a max bid of $100 when someone has PREVIOUSLY placed a max bid of $100, and if Heritage is doing this, it is a situation that should be corrected! How can that possibly be justified?
Very nice summary and clarification. I didn't fully grok the issue until your post.
Russ, NCNE
Whoops. Sorry.
My simple solution: I don't do business with them anymore.
Dragon
Please explain how Merz did NOT win the coin given the fact that Merz had a 500.00 bid in place prior well in advance to the end of the auction.
I agree that it might be better for Heritage to change its bidding system to give priority to max bids when a subsequent matching bid is placed, as per ebay. But I don't think that their present electronic bidding system is "unethical." To say it is unethical infers that somehow they are cheating a bidder or favoring one bidder over an other, even when they may not know or care who the bidders are--after all the internet bids are run by a computer.
From my observations, Dragon is correct as well when he says that many lots in their internet only auctions are their old inventory, on which they place reserves. That may mean that bargains are not to be had, but it is not "unethical" either. It is no different than all of the dealers who post their inventory on ebay with reserves at retail prices. The only difference is that the Heritage auctions are at their own venue instead of ebay. And they also do list inventory from time to time on ebay, including stuff that failed to sell in their internet auctions. After all, they are in business to make money, and if they stop being able to sell inventory at a profit, they will have to fold their tent.
<< <i>1) As with any internet auction, sniping is possible.
2) We discontinued extended bidding (10 minute rule) several months ago. All lots end exactly when they say they will end with no extension. >>
i retract my prev. post, didn't know this policy was discontinued. shows how often i bid on exclusive internet items!
<< <i>3) All consignor reserves are posted no later than 72 hours before the end of the auction. The final three days of the auction is free of any consignor input. >>
i don't see how that prevents someone from buying back their own coins by using a different id. same as what happens on ebay w/shilling. also, doesn't protect the buying public from similar tactics to make outlandish high bids on coins for the sole purpose of establishing an apparent high value for specific coins. HOWEVER, not sure you can ever be free of such problems EXCEPT to encourage LIVE AUCTIONS. i will say right now that i've been pleased w/ bidding at heritage signature sales in person.
<< <i>4) Heritage does not ... manipulate the bids in any way. ... We undergo a full audit every year ... >>
are the audits public domain? and btw, i do believe that bids are not manipulated on the heritage end. that would be unbelievably stupid business practice.
<< <i>I manage the bidding system on-line. I see every bid placed, when it's placed, who places it, etc. You are welcome to contact me at any time about any lot to discuss what happened if and when you feel anything is awry. I will give you a straight answer. >>
a little off the subject, but i found the "refund" terms to be misleading in that the 8% deduction from the refund is de-emphasized.
regardless of the issues and concerns, i will go on record again as saying that i have participated in several signature sales and have been pleased. only thing that i can say against them - is a purely personal thing: i am not a big fan of "bob merrill". but like i said, that is my problem, not heritage's.
K S
Don, would you allow Brian to discuss your transaction specifically here on this thread?
Brian, would you disclose exactly what happened with Don's $500 bid?
After we look at the facts, we can either be comfortable or not. If there is a system flaw, that doesn't automatically mean ethics are involved. It would be far better for Brian to step up and fix the flaw, and we not throw stones at him for coming forward.
Brian, we all respect and like Don. These board members on this thread can be very fair when presented honest facts and perspectives. Give us the opportunity to see what happened. Silence and avoidance will only foster negativity from this crowd, and you are likely to lose some customers over it. I won't even begin to express an opinion on Don's specific transaction until we know what happened. However, all appearances to this point mean that the ball is in your court for some explaining about what happened to his specific bid.
However, the fact is that their procedure, if my post on what they do is correct, screwed (I won't use the word "cheated" so you feel better about it) a dear and very popular fellow collector, Don Merz, out of a coin he has been hunting for quite a while.
You have a thought in your own post that I would ask you to rethink: "after all the internet bids are run by a computer." No, that is not correct. Pretty naive comment. Internet auctions are run by programs that human beings programmed, and if they program them incorrectly or program them against improper rules, then the auctions are incorrect or improper. I guess they could, conceivably, even make them unethical.
In any case, I'm more interested in whether Heritage comes back with a response on the issues I've raised on this one, or not.
1) We don't buy back items at the last minute because the price is too low. I'll be happy to take any particular coin you seem this is true on and deal with it off-line. Just email me - brian@heritagecoin.com.
2) On the $500 bid. Just as on eBay, we always award the lot to the first bidder in the case of a tie. The $500 bid was placed by another bidder first. Don's bid came in later, and in fact he was informed at that point of the bid that he was either outbid or lost to a tie. Email and web site logs show that this message was displayed and no bid confirmation email was sent for the $500 bid since it was too low to beat the max. I know it's easy to assume you have the winning bid when you see the current amount matches your own max, but the bid cofirmation notice at the point the bid is placed is key.
As a general rule, you won't find any differences at all in our proxy bidding system as compared to eBay. Our audits are independent - not internal as required by our insurer: Lloyd's of London.
Great questions. I know that "I'm on the insdie" and "you are on the outside" and it's easy to wonder what's going on inside our facilities here in Dallas. But, please rest assured, we are getting and selling the coins you want. No funny business. Just good business.
CIO
Heritagecoin.com
I am not saying that their system/program is unflawed. I said that I agree that it would be better if they had programmed the system to give the earlier max bid preference over a subsequent bid at the same price. My main points were (1) one of explanation of how their program may have caused the result in question, and (2) that it is, as you say, a matter of programming.
IMHO once a post here includes words like "unethical" it moves away from an objective analysis into one that calls into question the morals of a third party. I try not to do business with people who are unethical--including avoiding direct purchases. Likewise I may decide not to engage in bidding if I do not like the way the bidding software works. But the in the second instance the decision does not carry with it a subjective evaluation of the moral fiber of the dealer--it only means that I think he should get his computer software changed. So I might do business in a direct, over the counter transaction, instead of participating in a bidding systemt that I fiind flawed. And as I previously posted, I belive that the way the system works is explained somewhere in the rules or instructions, as I recall reading it in the past.
Let me give an example of a flaw in some live on line auctions that resulting in disappointment to me. I thought I was the winning bidder on two lots in a Superior auctiion. I hit the bid button at the price that won. And the screen showed an internet bid entered at that price. I thought it was my bid. It turned out it was an other internet bidder. Had I know it was not my bid I would have bid at least one increment higher, but I did not get the chance to do since there was no of knowing whether I would be bidding against myself if I hit the bid button again. Again, a flaw in the system. Likewise, another lot that I wanted closed very quicikly, before I could hit the bid button. So the system is not perfect. But I would not call it "unethical."
This was a very good thread since it raised important questions and clarified how it is supposed to work. Maybe Heritage can find Don an equal or better coin at the price he wanted to pay!
What's wrong with a owner being allowed to buy their own coins back? They obviously valued the coins more than the other bidders. The owners don't know the bids of the other bidders. The owner takes the risk that if he bids he will buy the coin back. He pays all the fees. Unlike eBay, he can't retract his bid.
Modern prices are overinflated? Which ones? The common stuff is so cheap that unless you get a bulk deal from PCGS you cannot slab the stuff and sell it at a profit. The top pop stuff is extremely hot. You cannot keep it in stock. You have half a dozen people begging you to sell them a coin.
Registry 1909-1958 Proof Lincolns
Registry 1909-1958 Proof Lincolns
We'll use our hands and hearts and if we must we'll use our heads.