CNG Auction 540 restarted for tomorrow

[robinjojo]

I just got notice from CNG that part of auction 540 will restart tomorrow due to technical issues.

However, it seems that bidders who submitted bids during today's live session are having lots that they won today reopen for bidding.  This is unfair, in my view.  If a bidder makes a live bid and is declared the winner of a lot, that lot should not be reopen for bidding.  A good many bidders were affected by today's decision, it appears, as lots 240 forward are being reopen.  I think a fairer decision would have been putting those lots whose live bidding deadline time had not expired up for auction tomorrow. 

Those bidders who won today, but whose lots are now open for further bidding should contact CNG and protest this decision.  

[Ancient Coin Hunter]

I got that email as well. A bit unusual I must say.

[Hesiod]

The website went down, and the lot 240 was chosen to be approximately right before the site went down?

So most bidders weren't affected, and most consigners were. It's a bad situation to be in, but it happens (and this isn't really at CNG's fault, auction-mobility went down as a whole)

[robinjojo]

Yes, there were technical problems, but it was still possible to bid on individual lots by specifying the lot number on the opening screen.  Bidding and winning of lots continued well into the Byzantine section, possibly beyond, so there was still access to the auction.

[Hesiod]

Reduced access to the lots means some bidders who didn't realize that would be screwed over; I'm also curious if access was working fine for mobile users

[kirispupis]

This freaked me out a bit, as I won my only lot in this auction and certainly don't want others to have the chance to increase their bids, but luckily it's before lot 240, so I still won it!

I'm very excited about the coin and plan a write-up when I receive it...

[Romancollector]

I sent an email to them. I won a lot, but it is after lot 240. As @robinjojo said, it is completely unfair if a live bidder makes a bid and wins, only for the lot to be reopened. 

[Hesiod]

In fact, I see for that login for some people started failing midway, so if I wanted to bid on a lot the site wouldn't have let me log in to make a bid; whereas if you were already watching you would be fine.

[robinjojo]

It puts me in an awkward spot.  The bid I made, which won the lot, was done in the final minutes.  I would not have done this had I known that an additional 24 hours was added later.  A total screwup on CNG's part in my view.

[robinjojo]

2 minutes ago, Hesiod said:

In fact, I see for that login for some people started failing midway, so if I wanted to bid on a lot the site wouldn't have let me log in to make a bid; whereas if you were already watching you would be fine.

It was still possible to bid on lots during today's malfunction by specifying a lot number on the CNG homepage for auction 540.  So, if you were focused on a specific lot or lots, access to bidding was still possible.

[Hesiod]

10 minutes ago, robinjojo said:

So, if you were focused on a specific lot or lots, access to bidding was still possible.

It seems that logging was returning 504 at some point, though; which would indicate that if you weren't already logged in you could not bid on any coins. Sounds like it wasn't a full outage, but a partial one, precluding some from bidding.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Hesiod

[robinjojo]

Interesting.  After I entered the lot number, I had access to the lot and logging in without a problem, and that was around 9 AM pacific time today.  I'm not sure when the malfunction occurred, but lot 240 was sold well before I logged in.

[Väinämöinen]

You're basically saying it's unfair you're not getting your coins dirt cheap. I say it's unfair to the other people who wanted to bid, but couldn't, as well as the consignors of those lots who would've taken a financial hit. 

I think the decision to continue from where the platform started having issues is perfectly understandable and the best course of action. CNG isn't the first or the last auction house to do this. Some have reversed and restarted complete sales due to platform issues.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Väinämöinen

[robinjojo]

I just got a message from CNG allowing me to cancel my bid, which I did.

[robinjojo]

19 minutes ago, Väinämöinen said:

You're basically saying it's unfair you're not getting your coins dirt cheap. I say it's unfair to the other people who wanted to bid, but couldn't, as well as the consignors of those lots who would've taken a financial hit. 

I think the decision to continue from where the platform started having issues is perfectly understandable and the best course of action. CNG isn't the first or the last auction house to do this. Some have reversed and restarted complete sales due to platform issues.

I'm not sure that the lot that I bid on went for a "dirt cheap" price.  Anyways it's been voided.  As I said, it was possible to live bid on specific lots, so it wasn't as if there was a total block.

Well, this is now ancient history, so back to the drawing table.

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

1 hour ago, robinjojo said:

A good many bidders were affected by today's decision, it appears, as lots 240 forward are being reopen. 

This is not a coincidence. I word: the Russians. Plus the number 240 is a semiperfect number, a concatenation of two of its proper divisors, a highly composite number since it has 20 divisors total (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48, 60, 80, 120, and 240), more than any previous number.
It is a refactorable number or tau number, since it has 20 divisors and 20 divides 240, 
a highly totient number, since it has 31 totient answers, more than any previous integer, 
a pronic number since it can be expressed as the product of two consecutive integers, 15 and 16.
240 is the smallest number that can be expressed as a sum of consecutive primes in three different ways: 240 = 113 + 127 = 53 + 59 + 61 + 67 = 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43.  Not a coincidence, I tell you. 😫

 

[robinjojo]

On 6/14/2023 at 11:43 AM, Väinämöinen said:

You're basically saying it's unfair you're not getting your coins dirt cheap. I say it's unfair to the other people who wanted to bid, but couldn't, as well as the consignors of those lots who would've taken a financial hit. 

I think the decision to continue from where the platform started having issues is perfectly understandable and the best course of action. CNG isn't the first or the last auction house to do this. Some have reversed and restarted complete sales due to platform issues.

I think it is erroneous to characterize motivations based on a general assumption for individual actions.  General assumptions, as you probably know, are often inaccurate.  The fact is that fourteen bids were submitted on this lot, my bid being the fifteenth, so I was not at the ground floor in the bidding.  My maximum bid then was $500, which I consider a fair price for this lot, lot 487.  

The auction was concluded today, and, yes, there were more bids during the last minute, and the lot sold for more than my maximum bid today of $550, by $50, so the winning bid was $600 plus buyer's fee of 20%.  

So, this is water under the bridge as far as I am concerned and time to move on.