America's Premier Auction of Stoneware & Redware Pottery ... Now Featuring Antiques & Decorative Arts
How-To's on All of Our Many Bidding Methods
HOW TO BID
ABSENTEE BIDDING
You can leave bids with us and have them executed for you as if you were present in the auction room. You authorize us to bid up to a maximum amount on your behalf, and we attempt to win your lot for the lowest price possible.
How to Bid
If you already know how absentee bidding works and you just want to get started, there are a few ways to do so:
1. Download our easy-to-use absentee bid form (CLICK HERE TO DO SO), fill it out, and fax it to us. (Fax Number: 877-815-6954.)
2. Give us a call at (410) 472-2016 or email us. If you call us, we'll ask for the lot numbers you'd like to bid on and your maximum bids. If you send us an e-mail, make sure to include both of those important details along with your name, address, and telephone number. If you've never dealt with us before, we may ask for a credit card number (that will not be charged unless at your specific direction) to secure your bids.
3. NEW! You can now leave absentee bids directly through our website. You'll see links to do so as you browse our online catalog. For more info on bidding directly through our website, click here.
A Few Notes about Absentee Bidding
Crocker Farm is a real, live, traditional auction, not an eBay-style or "absentee" auction. The action for each lot happens in real time, usually within a minute or two, at our auction gallery in Sparks, MD. The bids you make now are the maximum amounts that you authorize us to bid on your behalf when the live auction actually occurs (in the case of our next auction, December 3, 2011 at 10am) and your pieces are sold.
In this way, your bids are not revealed until auction day. We do not execute your bids against any other absentee bids that might have been left on a particular item until we enter them in our bid book and give it to our auctioneer the morning of the sale. Sometimes people call us a few days before an auction and ask us what "the bid is at" for a particular item. That is not how our auction works--like all live auctions we have ever participated in, absentee or "left" bids are not executed or divulged until they hit the auction floor.
In other words, your absentee bid is a completely confidential arrangement between you and us. We do not divulge absentee bid amounts, or even the number of times an item has been bid on, before the auction. Even when the auction occurs, other than being executed by the auctioneer, your bids, and your identity, are always kept completely confidential.
Order of Sale
Everything is sold according to lot number; so lot 1 is sold at about 10 am, lot 2 is sold after that, and so on. We generally average about 80 lots an hour, with the auction running slower at the beginning and picking up speed as we go along.
When Your Lots Are Sold
Let's say you bid on lot 100. Sometime around 11:30 am or so on the morning of the auction, we will put your item up for sale. The auctioneer will bid on your behalf against any other bids--absentee, phone, internet, and live floor bids. He will bid for you competitively. This means you could theoretically bid, say, $2000 on an item and win it for $500. We do not "run" your bids or start the bidding at your bid. As people who have attended hundreds of auctions ourselves over the decades, we have seen auctioneers handle absentee bids a variety of different ways. We handle your bids in the same way we always believed auctioneers should handle ours. In other words, we are very concerned with executing your bids in an honest and scrupulous manner.
A Couple of Common Questions
1. I bid $500 and the lot brought $500. Why didn't I win it?
One situation that comes up at least a few times each auction but can be confusing to some bidders is described as follows: Let's say you bid $500 on an item. The auctioneer starts the bidding and a couple of people in the auction room take the piece to $400. That means a floor bidder is in at $400. No one else bids in the room and the auctioneer starts bidding your absentee bid, at $425. The floor bidder bids $450. Your bid comes in at $475. The floor bidder bids $500.
At this point, because $500 was your absolute maximum bid, the auctioneer can no longer bid for you. If no one else bids, the lot is hammered down for $500, and another bidder won the lot for the amount you bid. Conversely, the same thing can happen to a floor bidder against your absentee bid. If the auctioneer happened to take your absentee bid at $400, you would have won (provided $500 was also the floor bidder's maximum). There is simply no way to control exactly where an absentee bid starts bidding, and what its final bid will be, in a live auction environment.
2. I bid $5,100 and the lot brought $5,000. Why didn't I win it?
A much rarer occurence is described as follows. Suppose you leave a bid of $5,100 on an item. When your item is sold, the auctioneer takes a $5,000 bid and then asks for $5,500. In a situation like this, if no one bids $5,500, the auctioneer probably will "cut" the bid to $5,250, but he would probably not cut it to $5,100.
The reason for this is that depending on what increments the auctioneer is using at a given time, it is considered inappropriate to cut that increment by more than what could be seen as a reasonable amount. The person who bid $5,000 has a right to maintain his position as high bidder unless overbid by an appropriate amount. This situation almost only ever arises at high bidding levels, but can happen at lower levels depending on the bid increment.
After the Auction
If you are a successful absentee or phone bidder, you should receive an invoice from us the week after the auction; we generally mail invoices on the Monday after each sale.
We offer full-service packing and shipping to deliver your items to you.
Other Ways to Bid
Click here to return to our bidding page for info on all of our other bidding methods.
Terms and Conditions
Please familiarize yourself with our terms and conditions before bidding.