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Never start bidding until the auctioneer has went down to the lowest price. I always let someone else jump in first and start the bidding this way I can gauge how much the piece will go for. The auctioneer may start a piece of glassware off at one hundred dollars. He knows it will not bring this as it is twenty-five dollar piece, but he never knows how the crowd will react there may be someone there who wants the piece. The auctioneer will continue to go down until someone has made the first bid. This may be down to five dollars.
After the first bid then the price will start to go back up if it is wanted by more than one in the crowd. If the auctioneer sees no one is interested in the item and he has went from one hundred dollars down to one dollar he will in most cases add another item to the first item to get the bidding started. In most cases another piece of glass. Then the bidding will normally start to build up. This is a common thing when the auctioneer has finally reach the junk of the auction or is trying to get rid of a large group of glassware. Bidding can be fast and furious at times especially on the smaller antiques. You have to keep concentrated on the auctioneer at all times.
Never look around the room trying to spot the other bidders. The auctioneer will find that person or people for you. KEEP YOUR CONCENTRATION. Although I hate to mention it on this format, you have to be very careful at times when bidding at a fast pace. There are some auctioneers that don’t have any scruples at all. Example. I was bidding on a group of old records and there was one other person bidding against me. I was concentrating on the auctioneer and never noticed that the other person had stopped bidding.
The auctioneer keep pointing to the other side of the room behind me and the bid keep raising so I matched the bid until I finally won the records. The problem was there was no one else bidding. He was taking ghost bids in order to keep me bidding. I got the records but not at a fair price. COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN COMPLAIN!!!!. I took the matter to the owner of the auction house with a witness and told him what I suspected. The records were sold to me at a fair price. Once the auctioneer has identified all the bidders then you should check out the other bidder and make the determination of how bad he or she wants the item. Was that fair of me, sure it was there are laws and guidelines that the auctioneers have to follow.
There are different floor plans or set ups the auctioneer will use to display the items to be bid. In most cases the auctioneer will have runners or helpers to hold up the item he is trying to auction. This person can be helpful person or a hindrance to the auction. The helper usually helps the auctioneer locate the bidders when they are bidding on an item. If there is only one helper and the room or area is large it can sometimes be hard to get the attention of either the auctioneer or the helper. Auctions that are setup well will have more than one helper and in some cases there will be four or five.
There is one auction house in particular in Indiana that has an excellent floor plan. At the front of the audience there are four long tables and at each table there is a helper. Each person has his own area to pull items from to display on his table. The auctioneer will start on one side of the room and work across each table. This gives the helpers time to dispose of the item just auctioned and time to pull another item to be auctioned. This also gives them time to help with watching the crowd to determine who is bidding.
If you go to an auction that is not prepared and there are plenty of them, be prepared to be aggressive if you want to be part of the auction. Keep yourself in front of the helpers or the auctioneer when bidding. Remember when you are bidding make sure someone is bidding with you and not an auctioneers ghost. There are several different ways an item will be auctioned off. If there are for example several pictures in frames to be auctioned off the auctioneer may auction them off with bidders choice. Meaning if you are high bidder you have your choice of just one. He will continue to do this and in most cases as the number of pictures gets smaller so does the high bid. So if you see a picture you want you may want to make sure you have the high bid on the first one. He may auction them as a lot so expect the price to be higher. Again if he auctions off the pictures one at a time, the price will be lower as the number of pictures gets smaller. The best always goes first.
Make sure you understand the format before you start to bid on an item. I was attending an auction in Indiana this summer and the auction had a large number of portraits and pictures to auction off. I remember one lady in particular who was bidding fast and furious on the larger pictures, but she had no idea what she was bidding on. She had bought two pictures for fifty-five dollars and still had no idea of what she had bought. She had thought she was bidding on a certain picture but the auction workers had confused her and the auctioneer was bidding them as buyers choice. This is a common way to bid on items but the auctioneer had not made it clear as to which lot she was bidding on. There were three helpers and all were holding up pictures from three different lots. This caused a lot of confusion and the items had to be re-bid as the woman made such a fuss. She was right in doing this as the helpers should not have been holding up items from three different lots. Again the lady should not have bid if she did not understand the concept of how the items were being auctioned off.
Finally on the format of estate sales, go in prepared to do business if you want to be a successful bidder at one of these sales. BE PREPARED. One other thing make sure you read the file on the Kit I have put together over the years and start putting one together for yourself and use it. It can make the difference between losing that one of a kind and buying a fake you think is real. There is one finally thing that needs to be said about estate sales. Although it may seem harsh of me to say this. Estate sales are no place for children. If you have to take children please watch over them carefully. If an item is destroyed you bought it at their price. REMEMBER WE DO THIS FOR ENJOYMENT SO MAKE LIFE A JOY. HAPPY HUNTING.
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