Barry S. Slosberg

Bidding was placed for approximately a week before the final auction date of Jan. 19th, 2020. This auction was featured on Live Auctioneers

The starting bid for Lot *** was $15 and I placed the $15 amount days prior to the actual auction date. A day or two later I put in a max bid of $20 just in case. My user name on Live Auctioneers is ***.

When I checked after the auction ran, I saw that the final bid on that lot was $20 and so I assumed I had won it but didn’t get any notification as to winning or losing from the auction house. Below are the following message that were sent and received via the Live Auctioneers message board:

Jan. 20th Me:

I bid the starting bid of $15 on this. A couple days later I bid $20. So I have won this auction and have not been notified. Please explain.

Jan. 20th Auction house:
I'm afraid bidding on Live Auctioneers doesn't work like that. You can't bid up your own bids.

You bid $15. Someone else came along and bid $20, so they were the high bidder and won the lot.

You would have had to have increased your bid by more than one bid increment to make that second bid have any effect, in this case, $25.

Jan. 21st Me:

But the winning bid was a $20 bid which I had made. So are you saying there was a tie? Because the amount was still at $15 when I went up to $20 just in case. I thought that in the case of a 'tie' it would be the 1st person to make the amount of the winning bid. Wouldn't the 'other' person have had to bid $25 to top my bid? Perhaps I'll check with the auctioneer’s board?

Jan. 21st Auction House:

There are no ties in auctions; the high bid is always with a single person at any point during the auction.

And bidding is turn-based, it goes back and forth, in set increments.

So: you bid $15 and then raised it to $20, but the bid increment was $5, so you were going to get outbid by anyone who happened to bid $20, or more.

You bid $15, someone else bid $20. You would have to have bid $25 or more to have been the high bidder again.