"Bid Protection" for Heritage Auctions

Ed62

Heritage is now offering a 'Bid Protection' option to on-line bidders, as they explain:

Bid Protection

Bid Protection allows you to ensure you are not outbid by automatically increasing your bid to the next full increment if you are outbid during the live event. This protects you from being "sniped" by a single increment. Bid Protection can be entered on all items except the current lot and the next upcoming lot.
Note: The extra increment won't be placed until the item is up for live bidding, so it is possible that you could be outbid by a bid placed prior to live bidding, such as another proxy bid, live proxy bid, mail bid, etc., which could result in your losing the lot by that one increment.

Anyone tried this yet? If so, what were the results?

Other opinions welcome.

Steve

Bottom line. If you REALLY want to win the item, bid the MAXIMUM you would pay to own it that you could afford. Then forget about it until AFTER the bidding ends on that item. If you win, great. If you lose, you KNOW you have bid your maximum and you should be satisfied with that fact. All the rest of this stuff is meaningless because you would then be just guessing what other bidders are doing rather than actually TRYING to win the item yourself. JMHO. Steve

Ed62

Good advice, Steve

roadrunner

Does this protection limit your increase to just a single bid increment.....as opposed to as many bid increments as the other collector who made the same "protection" bid selection?

Seems like a good way to ensure you pay 5-10% more than something.

BAJJERFAN

We'll bid until you win or run out of money, whichever comes first.

Sonorandesertrat

'Seems like a good way to ensure you pay 5-10% more than something.'

This.

BillJones

Once the bids get to a certain level, the next increment can represent a ton of money.

A few years ago I set $50,000 as the most that I would spend on a given lot. I was going to attend the auction in person, but I knew that if I got on the wrong side of the bidding back and forth that someone else could hit my $50k max, I would have to bid $55,000 or do a cut bid of $52,500. I don't know about you, but $2,500 or $5,000 means something to me. As a result I placed my $50,000 bid on the Web and hoped for the best. I ended up tying a floor bidder who was bidding as an agent and got the lot because I placed my bid first on the Web.

This bid protection thing can get very expensive for Web and mail bidders. It looks like a nice way for Heritage to get some higher bids and not so much a plan aimed toward consumer protection.

JCMhouston

In spite of all the wrong information presented above, yes it can be a good thing. If for example you get wrong footed on a bid and someone else gets your high bid in before you do, or if someone goes a half over your bid. It's like all other tools though, if you don't want to use it then don't .