On the buying end, be careful with written bids. While auction houses are supposed to obtain an item for the buyer at the lowest possible price, a common practice is to actually start the bidding at your maximum bid even if nobody else has bid up to that. If nobody outbids you, you ended up buying it for a lot more than it should have cost. This is technically illegal, but is virtually impossible to prove. I have had it happen to me a couple times and when I tried to call the auction house on it they insisted they had other bids that drove my bid up. I knew they were lying, but couldn’t prove it. For that reason I will never leave a written bid and only bid in person or live on the phone. Live internet bidding is OK too, but if it is an item I really want, I do not trust that nothing will go wrong, and arrange for a phone bid instead. If I REALLY want something, I get on a plane and attend in person.

If attending in person be careful of “air bids”. If they know you really want something, some auctioneers will invent bids to drive the price up. They will point to an imaginary person sitting behind you and you don’t know if their bid is real or not. That is why I stand at the back of the room, so I can see everything and everyone in the room. That still doesn’t prevent an auctioneer from being in cahoots with somebody else in the room, but it makes “air bidding” very difficult. Some auctioneers tell bidders to just hold their paddle in the air until they either win the lot or their maximum bid is exceeded. NEVER do this! If you do, you are almost guaranteed that if you win you will pay your maximum price for the item. Instead, lower your paddle after every bid and only raise it again when putting in another bid. I can’t tell you all the times I have seen bidders get screwed into paying more for an item than they had to by a shrewd and deceptive auctioneer.

It also helps to be able to examine the piece yourself in person, as auction descriptions are often inaccurate- usually an honest mistake, but sometimes on purpose. I could name quite a few auction houses that knowingly list fakes or repros as the real thing. When I see this, I will never deal with them again. Every auction house will make mistakes and most of them are honest ones. They are human after all, but you need to be wary of the crooks because they are more prevalent than you may think.

All that said, there is still a place for auctions as both buyer and seller. Mediocre pieces often do not do real well, but exceptional ones often do better at auction than anywhere else. If you have a large collection to sell it is often the easiest way to dispose of it. As a buyer I am of course looking for bargains, unless I am bidding for a client or it is something “must have”. Any given day an item can bring a fraction of its value or several times what it is worth. It all depends on who is bidding. If there is only one serious bidder the piece will sell for its reserve or opening bid. If there are two or more, the sky’s the limit. The uncertainty is part of what makes auctions interesting, but if you do it for a living (which I do) you need to be cautious, alert, and disciplined.