by Auctionwally

Created on: February 25, 2007   Last Updated: November 25, 2008

I have 25 years in the antiques & auction business, 12 of those as a licensed auctioneer.

Here are some proven strategies to get great buys at auctions, some are time tested classics, some are little known secrets.

These tips are written with the assumption that you already have some experience buying at antiques auctions, if you don't, please see my other articles here on helium, especially the one titled, "How to find a great auction".

Get to the auction hall with plenty of time to preview. Make good use of a pen and notepad. If your not sure how certain lots will be auctioned, ask. You will have a head start over a lot of folks in the crowd that assume they know how items will be sold, only to find that they are lotted differently than they thought when the item(s) reach the auction block. For example, they thought that the "lot of baseball cards" they previewed will go up individually, but the auctioneer has lotted all 50 cards together. Now they are making a scrambled gamble of a bid, but you asked in advance and know exactly how much you want to bid on them.

Never bid on anything of significance if you haven't previewed it. Believe me, when you think you're getting a steal on something you haven't inspected, it usually turns out to be chipped, or torn, or it's a reproduction etc.

Find a seat in the middle of the room where you can see what's being sold, but can also see the room. See if you can detect whether or not the auctioneer bounces bids off the walls.

On items you wish to bid on, don't wait until the auctioneer goes to rock bottom before you start the bid, at least not every time. It's OK to do that once in a while, but abuse of this technique makes you invisible to the auctioneer.

Often if you start at a fair price, you will get the item for a single bid. The reason for this is that most auction crowds are trained to wait until the auctioneer goes to rock bottom. You may have heard this referred to as getting "beat up". Auctioneers hate to get beat up. By making a bid in the lower middle price range you really throw the rest of the crowd off, and will get the item for a single bid very often.

There's a couple of other reasons to use this strategy, one is that, auctioneers love bidders who help the auction move along by starting the bidding quickly. If he/she is going to drop the bid fast on an item, it's going to be on a buyer who is helping him. Not the cheapies that always wait until he's at his bottom price. This technique can also be intimidating

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