Leu Auction - Could someone explain the bidding action ?

[Brennos]

I was watching the Leu sale live yesterday and something struck me when lot 591 came up for sale.

 

staters of Terina are rather sought-after coins, but this specimen is not of exceptional quality.

Here is the auction sequence :

How can you go from 2200 to 7000 in three steps and 5 seconds !

I think Bidder 3 is a "real bidder" and 2200 CHF is a coherent price, but what about the last three bids ?  

I understand that bidder 6 put his 7000K bid at 16:54:54 but why doesn't he appear the first time for 3300 CHF instead of the Bidder 7 that entered his bid 2s after him  ?

I must say that I have less and less confidence in the honesty of certain auction houses and in proprietary bidding systems in particular.

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Brennos

[John Conduitt]

The top 5 all bid at the last second with their maximum bids. You only need two to do that for this to happen. Bidder 4 gave Bidder 3 a value they thought they’d have to beat at the last second, not realising there were several others.

The list isn’t showing who was winning at every stage. It is only showing bids. Bidder 3 is only there multiple times because they bid that many times, but would have appeared as the leader at other values too. So Bidder 6 would have been winning for 2 seconds at 2400 but other bidders took them to 7000, which may not even be their maximum.

Edited December 10, 2023 by John Conduitt

[Brennos]

Thank you John. I think i wasn't clear and have edited my post.

The main issue is why Bidder 6 who entered his bid before Bidder 7 , does not appear in its place at 3300CHF  ?

Edited December 10, 2023 by Brennos

[John Conduitt]

3 minutes ago, Brennos said:

Thank you John. I think i wasn't clear and have edited my post.

The main issue is why Bidder 6 who entered his bid before Bidder 7 , does not appear in its place at 3300CHF  

It’s because it isn’t showing the automated bids that would appear if other people bid lower than the leader but high enough to move the bid up. It’s only showing the actual bid amounts.

If you bid on eBay you can see the difference because they have the option to hide or show automated bids.

Edited December 10, 2023 by John Conduitt

[panzerman]

Spink e-auctions have novel bidding process (timed auctions) Lets say lot # 330 comes up/ highest bid 800 Pds/ I bid 850 then there are 25 secs for counterbids. Thus you can't bid 2 secs to go and lot is sold. This will get higher hammer prices. 

I once had 10/ 25 sec. counterbids before loosing my coin.....

[Deinomenid]

On 12/10/2023 at 10:47 AM, Brennos said:

less and less confidence

Even with the helpful explanations showing the tables are bids not necessarily  time of  bids, there is more muttering about some auction houses than others. Here  I try to just bid what I think I can pay and accept it, suspecting shenanigans. And only bid live.

Plus the poor winner of this coin now has to deal with the HANDS. Beautiful coins,  until you focus on Terina's giant paws, which will henceforth never go away. I own a couple of these (at rather lower prices!) and they have a worrying magnetic quality.  Just look at that hand grasping the cippus. It could  crack open coconuts in seconds.

 

 

[velarfricative]

The mysterious last-second bidder who shows up to push you to your max at Leu is a well-known phenomenon. He certainly seems to have an uncanny ability to nearly always bid an increment or two below the max, but never to win a coin.

[kirispupis]

Just before Bidder 3 put in a bid of 1700, the latest bid was 1200.

• Bidder 4 places a bid of 1700, but Bidder 3 already had a higher bid, so it was bumped one increment up to 1800.
• Bidder 4 ups his bid to 2000 and takes the lead. I believe Bidder 3 had 1800, so the price was bumped to 1900.
• Bidder 5 tries to snatch the lot at 2001, which temporarily locks up the lot due to Leu's weird rules (Bidder 4's bid is automatically upped to 2000, but 2001 is higher). The price is now at 2001, but Bidder 5 did his snatch too early. Others with deeper pockets now know Bidder 5's max price.
• Bidder 3 takes advantage and puts in a max of 2200. I'm not sure what the bid increments are at this point so the price is either 2100 or 2200.
• Now the "big boys" take part and there are three nearly simultaneous bids. However, the first is Bidder 6 with (at least) 7000.
• Bidder 7 tries to grab it at what he probably thought was an insurmountable bid at 3300 and is swamped.
• Bidder 8 is desperate and tries a ludicrous bid at 6500, only to bump Bidder 6 to 7000.
• Bidder 6 wins it at 7000

[AussieCollector]

I have, on two occasions, bid in a Leu Auction beyond a medium or "low ball" bid.

On both occasions, when I really wanted the coin, I did a max bid at the last moment which was the equivalent of what the top of the market would be, plus a premium.

On both occasions, within the last 3 seconds, other bids came through within 20 CHF of my bid - but not beyond. Both. Times.

Decide for yourself what happened.

As for me, I will never bid on a high cost coin at Leu again.

[Salomons Cat]

22 minutes ago, AussieCollector said:

I have, on two occasions, bid in a Leu Auction beyond a medium or "low ball" bid.

On both occasions, when I really wanted the coin, I did a max bid at the last moment which was the equivalent of what the top of the market would be, plus a premium.

On both occasions, within the last 3 seconds, other bids came through within 20 CHF of my bid - but not beyond. Both. Times.

Decide for yourself what happened.

As for me, I will never bid on a high cost coin at Leu again.

Same experience for me, several times. I only bid at Leu for reasonable amounts that I’m really willing to pay.

I assume that there could indeed be a shill bidding system, as several members here have already suspected. 

Or has anyone ever won something at a price that was significantly lower than their max bid? 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Salomons Cat

[kirispupis]

37 minutes ago, Salomons Cat said:

Same experience for me, several times. I only bid at Leu for reasonable amounts that I’m really willing to pay.

I assume that there could indeed be a shill bidding system, as several members here have already suspected. 

Or has anyone ever won something at a price that was significantly lower than their max bid? 

For the sake of transparency/research, I tabulated all of my bids from Auction 17 to Auction 28 (8 auctions):

Total coins bid on: 47

Total wins: 30

Coins I paid my max: 3

Coins I paid one increment below my max: 16

Coins I paid two increments below my max: 6

Coins I paid 50% to 75% of my max: 5

 

IMHO it's difficult to draw conclusions from my numbers, but I'd be curious to see others'.

[Salomons Cat]

2 hours ago, kirispupis said:

For the sake of transparency/research, I tabulated all of my bids from Auction 17 to Auction 28 (8 auctions):

Total coins bid on: 47

Total wins: 30

Coins I paid my max: 3

Coins I paid one increment below my max: 16

Coins I paid two increments below my max: 6

Coins I paid 50% to 75% of my max: 5

 

IMHO it's difficult to draw conclusions from my numbers, but I'd be curious to see others'.

You bought a lot more coins than I did.
But your numbers speak clearly against shill bidding. Seems like this suspicion was wrong.
Thanks, @kirispupis!

Edited December 15, 2023 by Salomons Cat
(And sorry, Leu!)

[Tejas]

11 hours ago, Salomons Cat said:

Same experience for me, several times. I only bid at Leu for reasonable amounts that I’m really willing to pay.

I assume that there could indeed be a shill bidding system, as several members here have already suspected. 

Or has anyone ever won something at a price that was significantly lower than their max bid? 

Yes, very often.

I don’t believe that Leu is guilty of any wrong doings. Winning bids at the maximum bid or near the maximum bid should be the rule rather than the exception. Every bidder makes an assessment of the maximum value a coin is worth subjectively and objectively. Since the coin market is relatively transparent (and has become more transparent in recent years) these value judgments of different bidders tend to converge. 

[John Conduitt]

1 hour ago, Tejas said:

Yes, very often.

I don’t believe that Leu is guilty of any wrong doings. Winning bids at the maximum bid or near the maximum bid should be the rule rather than the exception. Every bidder makes an assessment of the maximum value a coin is worth subjectively and objectively. Since the coin market is relatively transparent (and has become more transparent in recent years) these value judgments of different bidders tend to converge. 

Yes I think so too. You’re not going to get so many bargains because dealers are watching for them. If anything looks low it will get bumped up a couple of notches by people who want to flip.

[Aleph]

Leu is a bad actor here.  The bidding patterns I have seen leave little doubt.  Good numismatists, dishonest business!

Edited December 15, 2023 by Aleph

[John Conduitt]

16 minutes ago, Aleph said:

Leu is a bad actor here.  The bidding patterns I have seen leave little doubt.  Good numismatists, dishonest business!

Do you have any examples? I’ve heard this over and over again but not seen any evidence other than people had to pay close to or at their maximum to win a lot. I don’t bid in advance so couldn’t ever say if Leu was bidding against me, which actually they’re entitled to do in that situation.

[Heliodromus]

3 hours ago, Tejas said:

I don’t believe that Leu is guilty of any wrong doings. Winning bids at the maximum bid or near the maximum bid should be the rule rather than the exception. Every bidder makes an assessment of the maximum value a coin is worth subjectively and objectively. Since the coin market is relatively transparent (and has become more transparent in recent years) these value judgments of different bidders tend to converge. 

In general I'd agree, but then there are cases such as the one that started this thread where there isn't an organic bidding process arriving at some consensus market value. This is most clearly seen in cases where there is a "nuclear bidder" who is bidding much higher than the rest of the field, who might therefore be expected to win the lot at one bidding increment above the rest of the field... but that isn't what happens. In some of these cases (enough to have attracted a lot of attention) there'll be a last second snipe that comes in just under the nuclear bid, pushing it to the maximum.

Now of course there may be more than one genuine nuclear bidder (defined as putting in a way above market bid just to be "sure" of winning) for a given lot, but then we'd expect these bids (which are NOT "market price") to be considerably different, and for the outcome between two last second snipers to be fairly random (who wins, the one who sniped at T-10 sec or T-5 sec?). The suspicious  pattern is when more often than chance the final bidder loses, but somehow seems to know the other bidders maximum and comes in just one or two bid increments below ...

I don't think anyone has seen this happening for lower price lots, but probably not just limited to "nuclear bid" cases, although those are the ones where it appears most obvious.

There's been previous discussion of this on CoinTalk.

[Tejas]

I think the explanation is quite simple and due to the fact that these are timed auctions. Hence, other than in a floor auction, where bidding can go as long as there are bidders entering bids, there is a time element to consider. Hence, some bidders put in last second bids that are way above the expected price to make sure that they are not outbid at the last moment when they have no time to increase their bid. If there are two bidders following this strategy you can get these large price jumps. So it is a gamble that may win you a coin, but at a very high price.  

Edited December 15, 2023 by Tejas

[Heliodromus]

2 hours ago, Tejas said:

If there are two bidders following this strategy you can get these large price jumps.

Sure, but the winning bid, and the one that comes after it but loses, don't always seem to be unrelated. As attested by some winning bidders, it seems the underbidder is often coming in just one bid increment under the winner's maximum (which they OUGHT not to be aware of).

Here's another example - underbidder comes in 2 sec before end of auction. Maybe the high bidder had sniped CHF 5,000 and all is ok ?

https://leunumismatik.com/en/lot/46/4751

More here:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/cng-112-mr-shill-revealed.346679/page-2#post-3707989

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Heliodromus

[Tejas]

I still fail to see the problem: 

Bidder 4 entered a bid for say CHF 5000,- or 6000 or even more at 20:13:48. 10 seconds later, Bidder 7 entered a bid for CHF 4000,- at 20:13:58. Hence, Bidder 4 wins at CHF 4200,- that is one CHF 200 increment above Bidder 7’s bid. I think this a good example of two bidders trying to secure the coin at very high bids, with both of them likely hoping that that they are the only ones to follow this strategy. 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Tejas

[Heliodromus]

It's the pattern of similar occurrences that makes one question it.

What if you knew (hypothetically) that the high bidder's maximum was in fact CHF 4200 (would be a very human bid - one increment above a nice round number), would you then consider this a bit more suspicious? When you see that CT discussion of some very seasoned bidders reporting this (from first hand perspective) doesn't that alarm you?

[John Conduitt]

2 hours ago, Heliodromus said:

It's the pattern of similar occurrences that makes one question it.

What if you knew (hypothetically) that the high bidder's maximum was in fact CHF 4200 (would be a very human bid - one increment above a nice round number), would you then consider this a bit more suspicious? When you see that CT discussion of some very seasoned bidders reporting this (from first hand perspective) doesn't that alarm you?

It seems a bit odd to be putting in nuclear bids and then being surprised that someone else did the same. I often use the nuclear bid strategy on eBay because I saw that’s the way people were beating me. Lots of people do it because somebody does it and you will lose otherwise. But I still lose plenty of lots to other nuclear bidders. I’m not going to put in such a crazy bid I wouldn’t be happy to pay it. The point is it’s always a market price, even if a high one, since two people have said what the very maximum is they’re prepared to pay. That is the definition of a market price.

That’s not to say it couldn’t be shill bidding, but it’s certainly not on enough coins for me to be able to know how many increments is normal. So unless these people on CT are regularly nuclear bidding on $5000 coins… and at that level the increments will be $500 so it is more likely to be within fewer increments.

Edited December 15, 2023 by John Conduitt

[Tejas]

2 hours ago, Heliodromus said:

It's the pattern of similar occurrences that makes one question it.

What if you knew (hypothetically) that the high bidder's maximum was in fact CHF 4200 (would be a very human bid - one increment above a nice round number), would you then consider this a bit more suspicious? When you see that CT discussion of some very seasoned bidders reporting this (from first hand perspective) doesn't that alarm you?

Of course, if we knew that the high bidder’s bid was exactly CHF 4200,- and if that happed a lot, this would be suspicious.

[Heliodromus]

1 hour ago, John Conduitt said:

It seems a bit odd to be putting in nuclear bids and then being surprised that someone else did the same

I guess I'm doing a very poor job of trying to communicate what the suspicious pattern is.

The issue is NOT having multiple nuclear bids on the same lot. Obviously that can happen, is not suspicious, and is why nuclear bidding is not advised!

The issue/pattern is very specific - a winning bid well above all other bids, that is followed by a losing snipe that pushes the winning one to it's maximum. And again, in isolation it could just be bad luck, but when it happens over and over, on the same company-owned bidding platform, then people notice ...

BTW your definition of nuclear bidding/sniping is a bit different to mine, not that it makes any difference to the discussion. When sniping (which is the only way I ever bid on eBay), obviously you only get one chance, so you have to bid the absolute maximum you'd want to acquire the coin for. Say you hope to win a coin for $150-200 but worst case would still be OK paying $300 for it, then you snipe $300. To me that's not a nuclear bid - that's just how sniping works. OTOH if in same circumstance you sniped $1000 just to make sure you get the coin (which you're pretty sure shouldn't go for more than $300, but you don't want to fine guess it), and would regret paying $1000 for it, then that's what I'd consider a "nuclear snipe". For all I know the winner of this Constantine coin was quite happy to pay CHF 4200 for it, in which case to them it wasn't a nuclear snipe, although to my value perspective it was; regardless it fits this pattern I underlined above. This isn't about the winner - it's about the "underbidder".

Edited December 15, 2023 by Heliodromus

[El Cazador]

15 hours ago, Aleph said:

Leu is a bad actor here.  The bidding patterns I have seen leave little doubt.  Good numismatists, dishonest business!

Proof?