eMoviePoster.com

We were asked this week, "Do you keep unpaid bids in your auction history section?"

This is a VERY important question, because we are almost certain that no other major auction house does as we do! If any item goes unpaid, we cancel it, and we then remove it from our Auction History, and we later re-auction the item and add it in to the Auction History at the new price it sold for.

WHY is this so important? I am glad you asked! Because this is a "game" that auction houses play, to try to deceive their buyers into thinking items sold for far more than they actually did (and not only have many auction houses been caught red-handed playing this "game", but they also regularly "re-auction" items that supposedly recently sold (sometimes again and again), which virtually guarantees the first result was not "real".

How does this work? Supposing an auction house has a "prestige" item (say one with a reserve of $50,000) and it comes down to the end of the auction and there are no real bidders (or ones who will pay the reserve). They COULD simply have it "pass" but that looks bad, both for the item itself and for the auction house. So instead they pretend there IS a $50,000 bidder and they declare it "sold", often using that result in their post-auction advertising.

But actually, the item is quietly returned to the owner (perhaps the owner was "in on it", or perhaps the owner was simply told the buyer never paid) and for some auction houses they own a large percentage of the items they auction, so there isn't even a consignor to worry about!

And then, the item is reported to have sold for $50,000, and when it next comes up for auction, and this time it sells for $25,000, the high bidder is thinking, "Wow, I got it for half of what that 'last guy' paid", when actually there may well have never been a "last guy". And the auction houses don't even have to re-auction the item to possibly make a new sale. They can have a "make offer" feature and maybe someone will offer to buy that item later, and they can quietly sell it to that person.

There are other "games" that auction houses play, including re-negotiating prices below what was reported, having items paid for in "trade", giving long term credit, and more. Worst of all is where the auction house owned the item AND they were also the high bidder, so they "bought" the item from themselves, and no transaction occurred, but it is reported as if one did.

BUT IN OUR AUCTIONS, YOU KNOW THAT EVERY RESULT YOU SEE IN OUR AUCTION HISTORY REPRESENTS AN ACTUAL SALE, WHERE THE CONSIGNOR WAS PAID THE LISTED PRICE (less our commission) IN CASH. This means you can trust all the results in our Auction History, but all others need to be taken with a VERY large grain of salt!