Six mechanisms, and why each one exists

You never bid a price here. You name a maximum — the most you would pay rather than lose the lot — and the house bids on your behalf up to it, one increment at a time, and stops the instant you are ahead. Your maximum is never shown to anyone, including the seller.

The consequence is the part people do not believe until they see it: the price is set by the second-highest maximum, not the highest. Bidding your true ceiling cannot make you pay more than one increment above your closest rival. It can only stop you losing to somebody who valued it less than you did.

Charlotte was willing to go to $1,200 and paid $925. Her honesty cost her nothing and won her the lot. Had she bid $700 to "test the water", Ana's standing proxy would have answered instantly and Charlotte would have lost an object she valued at $1,200 to somebody who valued it at $900.

A raise has to be meaningful. If a $50,000 lot could be advanced by a dollar, the close would be a typing contest. So the minimum raise scales with the price, exactly as it does in a real room where the auctioneer calls the next figure.

One exception, and it matters: the opening bid is the starting price itself. Nobody should have to beat a price no one has offered yet. Every bid after that must clear the current ask plus the step above.

Two bidders can name the same maximum. When that happens the earlier bid wins. The bidder who was already leading keeps the lot, and the newcomer is outbid before the page repaints — a matching ceiling is not a better one.

If Ana holds the lot with a $900 maximum and Charlotte arrives with a $900 maximum, Ana keeps it. Charlotte must go to $925 — the next rung of the ladder — to take it.

This is the only rule here that rewards being early rather than being right, and it exists because the alternatives are worse: a coin flip is arbitrary, and letting the latecomer win would let anyone displace a standing bid for free.

A reserve is the lowest price at which a seller is willing to part with the lot. It is sealed: you are told whether it has been met, never what it is.

A reserve does not block bidding — it blocks selling. Bidding proceeds normally underneath it, and if the clock runs out with the highest maximum still below the reserve, the lot is marked unsold, no order is created, and every deposit goes back. Nobody pays anything.

The moment somebody's maximum does cover the reserve, the ask jumps straight to it. That is why a lot can move from $400 to $1,000 on a single bid — the seller's floor has been reached, and the house advances the price to it rather than creeping up in $25 steps to a number everyone can now afford.

Sealing the number is what makes it useful. A published reserve becomes the opening price in every bidder's head, and the discovery the auction exists to perform never happens.

Sniping — placing a bid in the last two seconds so nobody can answer — wins auctions by denying rivals a response, not by valuing the lot more highly. It converts an auction into a reflex test.

So the clock defends itself. On a timed lot, a bid inside the final 2 minutes pushes the close out by another 2 minutes, and it keeps doing so until a full window passes with nobody raising. The lot ends when the bidding ends, which is what "going, going, gone" always meant. Total overtime is capped so a lot cannot be kept alive indefinitely.

Lots in a live sale work differently: an auctioneer closes them from the rostrum, so the clock there is a schedule rather than a deadline.

A bid is a commitment before it is a payment, so leading a lot requires money on deposit. When you take the lead, 10% of the current price — with a floor of $25 — moves out of your available balance and into held.

Held money is not spent and not lost. It returns to available automatically the moment you are outbid or the lot passes. If you win, it is applied to your invoice rather than refunded — you never regain the ability to spend it, because you have bought something with it.

Raising your own maximum tops the existing hold up to the new requirement instead of stacking a second one, so a lot you chase for a week never holds more than one deposit at a time. Every one of these movements is a line in your wallet statement, with the running available and held balance beside it.

The winning bid is the hammer price. On top of it the buyer pays a 10% buyer's premium, which is how the house is paid. It does not come out of the seller's proceeds.

Set your maximum with the premium in mind: a $1,000 ceiling is really a $1,100 commitment. Every invoice on this platform itemises hammer, premium and shipping separately, so the arithmetic is always visible.