Shoegaze
New member
How do you watch for that, though? I'm planning on catching my first auction in Belleville this fall, and I don't want to get taken for too bad of a ride.
SA STL roll call for this Tuesday....
- Thread starter keithsarcade
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How do you watch for that, though? I'm planning on catching my first auction in Belleville this fall, and I don't want to get taken for too bad of a ride.
dc2010
Active member
when you are bidding and you place a bid , pan around to see when another person(meaning not you, nor the shil bidder...aka the seller) bids , dont let emotion be involved in your bidding, follow your gut.....meaning when the spidy sense says stop...LISTEN
Superauctions is well known for phantom bids. The worst I've seen from them was a lady who was bidding on a MAME machine (not a 48-1 board). The bidding got up to $1100 with only her bidding. The auctioneer stopped the auction and apologized to the woman and said "You know this is just an old computer hooked up to an old computer monitor don't you?" The lady said "no problem" and won the bid. There where a lot of dropped jaws when that happened!
It's best to just make sure someone is actually bidding with you.
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What I'm talking about is even worse than phantom bidders. That's bad, but this is worse in my opinion.
When you've got someone who is really anxious, they'll bid say $50 (whatever the opening is), then stand there anxiously watching and you can tell they're ready to go higher. So the auctioneer will say "I've got 50 who will give 75?" The auctioneer looks around for a second then looks back to the anxious bidder and all the other callers look at him too. They basically look at him like "well, are you still interested?" so the same bidder nods his head and they take his bid.
Then they do that again at 100, 150, 175, basically until they either thing they've pushed their luck too far or maybe a conscience somewhere kicks in. They do all this very quickly so that no one has time to think or see what's really going on (or so they hope).
I've seen them do this without a doubt at the last two st. louis auctions (just a few times...it requires a very anxious and naive bidder). I'm no legal expert, but I'm guessing that this is a serious enough offense to lose their auctioneer license, but I'm sure there's no fear of that.
The other trick that people are talking about, the "phantom bidders" is a very sneaky thing that even pulls me in sometimes.
They will start something at say $200, then within five seconds pretend that someone bid $225, then start asking for $250. They will then sit on that 250 request for a LONG time and keep asking and asking for 250. Then they'll pretend that they're about to let it sell for $225. "TWO FIFTY.......TWO FIFTY................ANYONE ELSE?.........WE'RE REALLY GOING TO SELL IT HERE..........DOES ANYONE WANT IT FOR 250?..........THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE..........ARE YOU SURE?.................TWO FIFTY?....................THIS IS IT...................................."
Then there will be a pause and they'll either pretend that they can't remember who was in at 225, or they'll just confess and say, "ok, listen. who wants this thing? Will some one give me fifty?"
This is really trick to catch them on and you have to really have balls if they're doing this on a game you want really bad, because you're really not SURE if they have a real bidder or not. If they do and you were willing to go to $500, you'll be pissed cause you lost it. But if they didn't have a real bidder, you may be able to get it for $50 when they come back down to earth.
And they try this tactic on LOTS of the games. Not every one, but I'd guess more than half.
I doubt that either of these practices are considered legal, fwiw.
RedWolfJC
New member
I love the "Where's my Bidder" line.
It's hard to "prove" what really happens, whether it's the auctioneer trying to get a little more out of the machine, or the owner who pushes that shill bid one bid too far. Either way, it seemed to happen more at this one. Maybe bidders are getting smarter and not falling for it as much?
It's hard to "prove" what really happens, whether it's the auctioneer trying to get a little more out of the machine, or the owner who pushes that shill bid one bid too far. Either way, it seemed to happen more at this one. Maybe bidders are getting smarter and not falling for it as much?
OP
OP
keithsarcade
Well-known member
Ive only caught them doing that on pins. But considering that fact alone, it dosent suprise me.
Shoegaze
New member
Thanks kindly for the insight everyone, hopefully it'll keep me out of trouble. It's a little frightening to think that their bread and butter is probably taking novices like me for a ride. 
Alky
New member
seems like theres enough klovers at a few of these things to kinda spread out in the room so when someone says they wanna go for something a couple guys can kinda pan the room and if something strange seems to be happening they can tell you to stop bidding or straight up call someone out on it.
7146aaron
New member
Bidding
Usualy I will stand right next to the auctioner and show him I am paying good attention on every item. I can see what he sees that way and I have corrected him before. I am sure John noticed me doing this a Christy's when we were both there. I will only bid on about 10% of the stuff but the auctioneer can tell I have done it before and stays honest it seems.
Usualy I will stand right next to the auctioner and show him I am paying good attention on every item. I can see what he sees that way and I have corrected him before. I am sure John noticed me doing this a Christy's when we were both there. I will only bid on about 10% of the stuff but the auctioneer can tell I have done it before and stays honest it seems.
Yes, I agree. I do the same. I stand right up in front and pay close attention.
The way I solve the first situation (making sure I don't bid against myself) is this: whenever I place a bid on the item but then they do some shenanigans to make me think I need to bid again, I will just say to the auctioneer "AM I IN?" and so far they have always fessed up and told me when I was in. I admit that sometimes I get confused in the excitement and can't remember what my last bid was. You can always interrupt the auction and ask if you're in. If you're not in, they typically say "no, I have this gentleman over here" and point to him.
The only way to try to solve the second situation (phantom starting bids) is like Aaron said. Stand up front and try to see what they see. Also, it is SO rare for someone to really take the opening bid right out of the shoot. Most people know that whatever the auctioneer asks for initially is too much and they wait until he comes down. And even if not, they don't bid IMMEDIATELY. Whenever they act like they got a oddly high bid right away, it is almost always a phantom and they're trying to suck you in.
John
RedWolfJC
New member
Drilled the lock on the other machine and found about $6.25 in change... not too bad. Then I found the key about 5 minutes after I drilled the lockThe nice one had about 12 packs of cigarettes in it, not sure if there is any cash in it or not, it's locked up and I haven't had a chance to drill the lock yet. The junk one just had some loose change in the bottom, few nickles and dimes nothing much.
But yeah, we got more than our $20 we paid for those in cigarettes, provided someone doesn't care about smoking stale cigs
Also got the 280 Zzzap working after about a half hour of tinkering...
GORDONFAN
Permanently Banned
Awesome.Drilled the lock on the other machine and found about $6.25 in change... not too bad. Then I found the key about 5 minutes after I drilled the lock
Also got the 280 Zzzap working after about a half hour of tinkering...
Glennon
