Originally Posted by
chanp
Yes, I understand that, just got me curious to see why someone would outbid me when there were 2 auctions that didnt have any bids at all and was wondering if SPG were involved in anyway to get us to increase our bids, etc..
All I can say is that having bid on a number of auctions, and purchased a few things, they seem to be very much on the up and up. I've seen this before, where an auction will have a much higher bid than what could be done if they just moved to another... you also see the same thing on eBay and other auction sites.
Just looked at the Boulud auction in question... in this case, people may prefer to be positioned near the top (in line to close first) thinking that these initial bids don't mean much anyway... and ultimately they may close lower than those near the end. I think this is what happened here.
Also, somewhat related... in these auctions, bids can jump high and look out of whack if someone puts a high "bid up to" price and another bidder comes along and also puts a high "bid up to" price with no way of knowing that there's that bid in the background. For example, a listing that now shows a bid of 1,000 may have a "bid up to" amount of 5,000. Someone placing a max bid of 2,500 on the same auction will immediately go to 3,000.... if there was no max bid placed it would only go to 1,500.