Auctions - why bid early?

Fortunately the proxy bid system has eliminated the need to "snipe" just enter your max bid. If you use proxy no need to do this days ahead of time, but also no need to enter bid with 10 seconds left thinking you will sneak in a low price a couple dollars more than last bid, since you have already committed to max price.

The only "problem" with proxy bid is friend of seller with no intention to actually buy item may bid up the item at the end and hope to push proxy bids up automatically......I wonder how much of this happens, and how would you ever prove or find out about it?

I would think red flags would go up if the same item were auctioned more than once from same seller (if you could find out this info).

Angela, yes there can be legitimate reasons why same item is auctioned more than once by same seller as you just described. I am just wondering out loud about my description above where friend "could" bid up item to raise proxy bids, and then if he went too far and was high bid not buy the item. Seller would then have to auction again later.

That might be a nice feature to have at Audiogon, an auction history so buyer could see previous results if same item was auctioned before, and draw his own conclusions.

The scenario I describe hopefully rarely if ever happens at Audiogon auctions, especially if seller has great feedback history. Don't want to get too off track here from original question about when to place your bid.