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| Share tales of items seen before the auction begins |
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You go to an auction, find something you like, and bid to try and buy it. The auction concept is a pretty simple one - but while this is sometimes true, it is not always so. Auctions often have quiet and unseen battles being waged by bidders with bidders and these engagements can affect both the offerings and the outcomes of the bidding.
A recent column about a bidder sabotaging a clock in an effort to chill interest in it by other would-be bidders brought several responses from readers. One was particularly interesting, because it plainly illuminates this bidder-on-bidder conflict. Here is the reader’s letter.
“Some years ago my wife and I were attending an estate auction. A table of small cardboard boxes of smalls caught my wife’s attention. She rummaged through a number of the boxes, finding nothing of interest, until she came upon a box in the center of the table. There she spotted a small, antique lavaliere necklace with a small diamond mounted in the center. She placed the item back in the box where it had been and went on looking at other things.
“As she was standing at the next table, she spotted another lady looking at the same necklace. This lady took the necklace and placed it in another box of smalls that contained mostly junk items, carefully hiding the piece under some plastic kitchen utensils.
“My wife waited until the lady moved on, whereupon she went back to the box of kitchen junk, took the necklace from its hiding place, and put it back in the box where the auctioneer had originally placed it. Bid time came and my wife bought the box with the necklace at a fair price. She was quite satisfied with herself and the deal.
“The lady that had hidden the necklace in the box that was several feet away subsequently opened the bidding on what she thought was the box holding the necklace. Since I have a bit of a warped sense of humor, I topped her opening bid. She bid again and so did I. She jumped her bid in an effort to scare me off, but I outbid her once more.
“Finally, I let her have the grouping at a price far higher than the contents were worth. Imagine her anguish when she went through the plastic knives and forks several times only to discover that the necklace she had hidden was not there.
“Meanwhile, my wife slipped the gold lavaliere on and kept it on for the rest of the auction. I don’t think the ‘lady’ ever caught on to what happened. The moral of this story is if you find something you like at an auction, keep an eye on it until it crosses the block.”
Did you notice how the reader described his wife as being “quite satisfied with herself and the deal?” In other words, she and the other woman had engaged in a battle of wits (unknown to the second woman) and his wife felt some exhilaration for having come out on top. This can be likened to “frontier justice.” The wife saw the other woman do something that she deemed to be sneaky and wrong. This was not a police matter, so she did not call the authorities. It was an auction matter, but she chose not to report it to the auctioneer or a member of his staff. Instead, she chose to right the wrong herself then and there - and, in her mind, she did.
So did she? We cannot know, because we have no knowledge of what went on prior to the second woman being seen moving the necklace to another box. To help keep this straight, we will identify the box that the wife put the necklace into as “Box A” and the box that the other woman put the necklace into as “Box B.”
We know that the wife saw the other woman remove the necklace from Box A and put it into Box B. The wife then returned the necklace to Box A. Prior to the wife’s involvement, however, maybe the other woman saw someone else take the necklace from Box B and put it into Box A - and she was merely returning it to Box B where she thought it belonged.
Perhaps the necklace had been moved several times by several would-be bidders. Here is a thought - maybe the diamond and gold necklace did not belong in any of these boxes but, instead, had been removed from display elsewhere and hidden in a box by another would-be bidder who hoped to acquire it for a cheap price.
The reader-husband then jumped into the mix. He described himself as having “a bit of a warped sense of humor” and he deployed it in a bidding war with the other woman. He did not bid to buy the box that she was bidding on - the one she thought contained the necklace she had put there. Instead, the reader bid solely to run her up on the price she would have to pay to buy the box which, in fact, lacked what she thought she was bidding to buy. He succeeded and saw to it that she paid “a price far higher than the contents were worth.” He obviously found it satisfying to “[i]magine her anguish when she went through the plastic knives and forks several times only to discover that the necklace she had hidden was not there.” This gave him a fulfilling feeling of street justice being done to one who deserved it. We have all felt the same in other situations and many of would have done what the reader and his wife did here.
Let me be clear. I am not being critical of this reader or his wife. I am simply using their experience to highlight the bidder-on-bidder battles that often occur in auctions.
This can be an important dynamic and one that bidders need to be aware of and watch for carefully. The reason for that is the bottom line is always the same - money! Who will spend it and who will get it - who will gain and who will lose. |
| 3/23/2011 |
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