doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Holts December 2021

I do not know what happened with Gene's bid at Gavin's but the system works pretty much the same at most UK auction houses, sealed bid and timed auctions being the exceptions.

My clients and I bid quite a bit on UK auctions and for the most part are pleased with the results. YMMV but shrewd shoppers still do well playing the game. One of my clients, a board member here, continually shocks me with his buys. He has a variety of tastes and picks out quality others overlook, he has done very well at Holt's.

Assuming Gene was bidding entirely sensibly, as I am sure would have been the case, Gavin might well have had a bid or bids in front of him just under his high bid in which case Gene’s high bid was the place to start.

Having started there he wouldn’t have done Gene any favours to allow someone dozing in the room time to realise that they might want to pay a bit more.

My recent Holts purchase was estimated at 800 to 1200. I thought it would go for quite a bit more but realised I would be upset if I didn’t try if it went for near the bottom estimate.

My first thought was to bid £880, then decided £900 was a fairly obvious bid for another punter, and emailed in a bid for £920.

I got it for £900, so Holts clearly played fair and didn’t go to the top of my bid. I assume the under-bidder was at £880 so if I had bid £880 he would have probably got it as my bid went in fairly late.

Parabola is quite right that one must assume that when your maximum bid is used as the maiden bid, then someone must have been just one bid below you.
However, back in the day when I left commission bids with Holts on big-ish ticket items, I sometimes bought several if not all my items for my maximum bid at each sale. Eventually I smelt a rat and, on the advice of someone who worked there at the time, I started doing phone bids on ALL my gun purchases in the main sale. Amazingly I now started getting guns for less than my maximum bid, sometimes MUCH less. Okay sometimes I paid a bit more due to auction fever and sometimes I lost out to another bidder but rarely did I pay exactly the maximum bid I would have left on commission.
At Gavin's, this seemed less of a problem, Bonhams were usually okay as well.

One other thing to remember is that the auctioneer is very, very good at his job.
If he has a commission bid in front of him, he will open the bidding and take bids (as far as possible) so that the specific commission bid will be arrived at if it gets that far.
As an example, if I bid £380 on a guncase and it is knocked down to £380, I am almost certain that I have got it. Even if the bids climbed from £200 with bids from the floor against me, it will arrive at £380 with me if it runs that far. It may run on but if it stops at £380, I know from experience, it is almost certainly mine.
I got a case at the latest sale for £320 but I had placed a commission bid of £380. There obviously wasn't strong interest and watching the bidding online, it petered out at £320. Happy days!

Another thing to be aware of is that commission bids are timed and dated.,ie an earlier bid will trump a later bid of the same amount.

I didn't mean to impinge Gavin's reputation. There are other logical explanations for the auction. I had sent him a dating chart for Reilly's that he liked. It could have just meant that he wanted me to have the gun. Or maybe he was tired at the end of the day.

I bid on two items - a gun and a case - and got both for about 10%
below my maximum bid.

I have in the past submitted bids to Gavin Gardiner’s prior to the auction. In one case it went for more than my max, in the other I got the pair for 5,000 on a max of 7,500. Gardiner’s has been a pleasure to work with both prior to sale with getting questions answered and with closing the sale when complete.

One thing to consider is the number of guns that any of these auction houses have to measure up. Nowadays, in general, I have found Holts pessimistic in the MWT's which is the way to be. Others have been a bit more 'creative' in their measurements and I wouldn't trust them. Not mentioning any names so my advice is to assume the worst and be delighted if the measurements are correct!