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eMoviePoster.com - The most trusted vintage original movie poster site & the only major online auction with no buyers premiums!
Did you know... that our auctions have proxy bids (or "limit bids"), plus "TIME-EXTENDED" bidding and how this is VERY different from eBay auctions?
Return to Did You Know ArchiveAdded: 12/07/2020
People who have bid in our over 1.4 MILLION eMoviePoster.com auctions
over the past thirteen years likely know full well how the "proxy bid"
system works (and it is very similar to, but not exactly the same as eBay's
"proxy bid" system). But if you are relatively new to our auctions (or
online auctions), please read the below for a "refresher course" in how our
"proxy bid" system works:
A proxy bid is a bid that works almost exactly the same way as bidding on
eBay. You bid your maximum, and the auction software will bid on your
behalf. So, if another bidder is currently bidding $25 and you place a
maximum bid of $100, you will have the high bid at $27. If another bidder
comes in at $60, you will then have the high bid at $63. So as you can see,
it works just like eBay does.
The HUGE difference between our
site and eBay is that our auctions have time-extended bidding, which means
you can never get "shut out" by "snipe bids", and the HUGE difference
between our site and other private auctions is that we went to considerable
expense to ensure that even WE can't see you proxy bids, so in OUR auctions
you don't have to worry that your limit bids won't be kept 100%
confidential!
By the way, you can always see what your maximum bids are, even though your
current high bid may be far lower than your secret maximum. When you're
logged in to the auction site, on the menu below our logo, click on "My
Account". On that page (just below the menu) is a link that reads "Bids".
Click on that and it will show you all the bids that you have placed as well
as what your maximum bid is. There is one unusual situation that comes up
every so often by sheer luck, and when it does, and the bidder is a new
bidder, they invariably e-mail us about it. We received the below e-mail
from a customer about a specific item he bid on that went straight to his
maximum bid as follows:
"I placed a limit bid of $80 on an item when it was displaying a bid of
$62. There was a high bid of $62 so I would expect my bid to show up as
$65 (one bid over the current bid). Instead it went straight to $80. I'm
new to this, but can't find an explanation for why my bid didn't just
raise the current high bid by the minimum increment (in this case $3) -
which is what happened in the case of the other items I bid on."
We replied with this detailed explanation (there is no short way to
explain what occurred!):
"This is Bruce, the owner. What happened is easy to understand once you
know how the system works.
First, go to that item's auction page and click on the "Bid History" link
at upper right. That will take you to a page that shows you every single
bid that was entered (there is NO other auction that shows you
every bid including the bidders' IDs).
Now look by at this bid history. When you look at the place on the bid
history where you first placed the $80 bid, you can see that bidder #1 had
previously entered a bid of $77 (in the same way that you entered a bid of
$80 later). At the time he entered the $77 bid, the current high bid was
$30, so it became his bid at $32, with his secret maximum of $77. After
that, bidder #2 bid $35 and $40, which made it bidder #1's bid at $42.
Then bidder #3 bid $52 and $62, which made it bidder #1's bid at $65.
It was at this point that you placed your $80 bid, and since bidder #1's
secret maximum bid was $77, you were immediately raised to your limit of
$80 (had his secret maximum bid been $76, it would have been your bid at
$79, because of the $3 increment).
Again referring to the page, since that time bidder #1 came back and bid
$113, which made it his bid at $83 (since your maximum was $80), and since
that time, you have bid three more times and it is now your bid at $118.
HERE IS WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO KNOW! I can see from that
page (as everyone else can) that you are the high bidder at $118, because
that is one bid increment ($5) over bidder #1's $113 bid, but no one (even
including me!) can tell if you have a secret high bid over $118. That will
only be discovered if someone places a higher bid, and if $113 is your
highest bid, then they will outbid you, but if you have a higher bid than
$118, then you will outbid them.
Hopefully all of the above is clear and understandable to you, but if not,
please reply with any questions.
Thanks and best of luck to you
Bruce"
We also get emails from people who expect our auctions to be like
eBay, and say "I waited for the end time and bid, and suddenly there was 5
more minutes on the auction". This is caused by "time extended bidding".
Here is what it is and how it works:
The bidding in our auctions is similar to how it is on eBay (it
includes proxy bidding where you can bid the most you are willing to pay and
the software will bid on your behalf until you have been outbid).
There is one major difference. These auctions use time extended bidding.
Here is an explanation of how that works. Let's say that an item you want to
bid on ends at 7:00 PM. If you bid at 6:56 PM, the auction will now end 5
minutes later, at 7:01 PM. If another bidder bids at 7:00 PM, the auction
will now end at 7:05 PM. So as you can see, the auction will always end when
5 minutes have passed after the last bid was placed.
Some buyers have voiced a concern that the auctions could last "forever"
with time extended bidding, but this does not happen. We know this because
we have held well over 1.4 MILLION auctions on our own site, and it
is very rare for an item to be extended more than 10 or 20 minutes (and even
this happens rarely, with the majority of the items closing at the original
end time). This is because buyers quickly realize there is no benefit to
waiting until the very end to bid (because they can never "bid at the last
second" as they do on eBay), so most buyers bid on whatever they are
interested in well before the end of the auction, but at the latest, in the
final few minutes.
In a way, this is the exact reverse of eBay "sniping"! There is no
advantage whatsoever to bid in the final seconds, because the auction will
be extended for 5 minutes after you bid, whenever you place the bid. And
you have a lot to lose if you try to bid in the final seconds, and your bid
is not accepted (either due to a problem with your computer, or with the
auction software), because if you try to bid with seconds to go and fail,
then the auction ends, but if you tried to bid with minutes to go and fail,
then you can try again until your bid is accepted.
Or to put it another way, a time
extended auction is very much like a live auction. The auctioneer takes
bids, and when no one bids for a short period of time (in this case, the
"time extension"), the auctioneer says "going once, going twice, sold!", and
the auction is over.
So, there really is no purpose in having snipe (last second) bidding in an
auction that is time extended because the auction would be lengthened when
the snipe bid was placed, eliminating any benefit to last-second bidding.
Therefore, all bidders should understand that our auctions are more like a
live auction and should either bid in advance or within the last 5 minutes
of the auction (the ideal time to bid is with exactly 5 minutes to go,
because that way, you don't extend the auction, and if those last 5 minutes
go by without another bid being placed, then you surely win the item).
To any of you who think "without sniping, I will never get anything (or I
will have to pay way more)", we ask you to wait and see these auctions in
action! There WILL some auctions where you will lose the item (or pay
more) and that will seem attributable to the "time extended bidding", but we
guarantee you that there will be many other auctions where it seems that you
get the item for less than you would have, had you placed a high snipe bid.
And you can NEVER have even one item snatched away from you in the final
seconds by a "sniper"!
If you are fairly new to our auctions, this time extended bidding will
take some getting used to, but over time you will see just how much better
it is (and how much more fair it is) than eBay style "fixed time" ending
auctions! Here is a comic strip we commissioned by the super talented
cartoonist Erik Andresen, which beautifully illustrates the advantages of
time extended bidding!
And here is a wonderful comic strip we commissioned (from the master
cartoonist, Erik Andressen) that illustrates just how helpful
"time-extended" bidding is in getting posters you want!
Complete Buyer Protection - No time limit on our guarantees & NO buyer beware
Hershenson
Help Hotline - Direct line to Bruce (our owner!) for urgent problems
Also, please read the following two pages of Consignor Reviews
-
Page 1,
Page 2,
and two pages of Customer Reviews of our company
-
Page 1,
Page 2,
which shows you in our customers' own words exactly what makes our company and our auctions so very different from all others! |
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Postal Mailing Address: Bruce Hershenson, P.O. Box 874, West Plains, MO 65775.
(For our UPS or FedEx address, click here)
Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson, 306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775
phone: +1 417 256-9616 fax: +1 417 257-6948
E-mail: Contact Us
Hours of Operation:
Monday - Friday 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM & 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM (CDT)
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