ANR auction - I don't understand what happened

Barry

I put a proxy bid in on a a coin in the ANR auction today. After posting the bid, I got a reply saying there was a higher bid (or something to that effect) and next increment was $50 more. I also watched this auction live via ANR's web site. There were no floor bids and it looked like the winner was a mail bid for an amount equal to what I bid.

Next thing I see on the My Account page is I am winning bidder at the proxy bid I placed, but was told it wasn't high enough. The rules say in case of ties earlier bid wins. The mail bid was before mine. Is this some kind of sneaky reserve? Any ideas?

4thStooge

Your on-line bidding wins now come with a jumbo tube of K-Y jelly from all the auction houses.

ColonialCoinUnion

No idea - but I've seen similarly odd things going on with Heritage auctions.

I'm guessing its a big game to put reserves on coins and then pretend they aren't actually reserves but bids from some other non-existent collector. Its a real good part of the hobby as far as I'm concerned.

Sunnywood

It is possible that the prior bid was revoked. Sometimes an auction house allows a bidder to reduce or cancel a bid before an auction begins. It is also possible that there was a reserve on the coin, and that the auction house or a related party (e.g. an insider) owned the coin. When they saw a lack of other bids, they may have decided to reduce the reserve and let the coin go to the highest real bid.

Anyway, those are two scenarios I could think of. It could also just be that ANR's software-based system for processing online bids is still new and there are bugs.

Best,
Sunnywood

Pistareen

Hi Barry:

I'm glad you got a chance to bid in the auction and I'm disappointed for you that you didn't get what you wanted. If you'd like to PM me we can figure out precisely what happened. My guess: ANR and Stack's each had their own separate books for this sale, and I bet the Stack's bid at the same level was received earlier. This is just a guess, but I'm more than happy to discuss it with you.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the sale live, via Internet, mail, or phone. It was very successful.

John K.