I’ve been checking out the new GraysOnline website and purchased a few items.

It continually amazes me that people pay way too much for items because they don’t know how to place bids.

There are three things to remember when placing bids for lots. They are the bidding rules.

1. 1.Highest bid wins
   

2. 2.Highest quantity wins
   

3. 3.First bidder wins
   

So how do these work i hear you say. Well if you take a look at a few lots you’ll find that the same people are placing the lowest possible bids on all of the lots they are willing to purchase and then they leave it until near the closing time of the sale. i.e. If they want to buy a camera of type X they place bids on all the cameras of type X at the lowest price.

When it gets to sale close time they find the lot that still has the lowest price and bid for that item.

Here comes the tricky bit. You need to decide if you want to place a “standard” bid or an “auto” bid.

A “standard” is a once off bid for the quantity and price entered.

An “auto” bid tells the bidding engine to place an automated bid for the minimum price required to win the quantity selected of the lot up to the maximum bid price entered.

So an auto bid for the next bid price is exactly the same as a standard bid.

The next thing is that the auctions are real auctions not sales that end at a time. So you can’t “snipe” and auction as it will simply extend the length of the auction.

Don’t understand? Think of a house auction. While people keep bidding the auction keeps going. When people stop bidding the auction closes.

The same is true with GraysOnline, they have a Going, Going, Gone period of 10 minutes after the last bid time after the sale closing time.

So if someone bids on a lot 5 minutes before sale close time, the lot will stay open and in the GGG state for 5 minutes after the sale closes.

If someone else places a bid on the lot then it will stay open for 10 minutes from when the bid is place.

There’s one caveat to this, the GGG time is only extended if the bid placed changes the win price of an item in the sale.