American auction
In American auction is a special form of auctions . They are usually carried out for the benefit of charitable purposes . While at other auctions only the person who wins the bid has to pay, the American auction is an all-pay auction . Everyone who places a bid pays the difference to the previous bid. The final bid then does not correspond to the price that someone has to pay for the item, but to the auctioneer's income. This often generates income that exceeds the value of the items to be auctioned, since it is not the purchasing power and value of an individual bidder that is decisive, but the potential of the entire bidding public. A skilful bidder, on the other hand, can still make a bargain if he makes a one-off bid at the right moment that only increases the previously achieved price by the specified smallest possible difference.
procedure
The auction process usually looks like this: You set the increase step, for example at 5 euros, the first bid is therefore 5 euros, the second 10 and so on. Everyone who makes a bid pays their 5 euros immediately after the bid in a till, whereby everyone is free to follow the first bid with further ones. You keep bidding until nobody can be found who is ready to beat the last bid.
If a bidder does not pursue any other interests (e.g. to show his willingness to donate publicly or even to compete with his opponents for the mostly non-profit aspects of the auction), the bidding strategy usually amounts to merely increasing the minimum increment and instead using the Number of bids to stay within your budget. Therefore, American auctions usually start slowly and get livelier the more likely the end of the auction becomes apparent.
For the most part, however, those involved are only marginally interested in the item on offer and primarily in supporting the project that the proceeds are to be financed and in having fun at the event, which can turn into betting fever.
variants
- In a penny auction, the additional final price to be paid by the auction winner increases by a fraction of the stake, for example one cent, for each bid submitted. The total income of the auctioneer is usually not explicitly displayed; instead, high-quality products are advertised with an apparently low final price.
- The organizers set a maximum amount and do not disclose to bidders where that maximum amount is. The bidder who reaches the maximum amount with his bid will be awarded the contract.
- Instead of setting a maximum amount, one sets a duration for the auction and does not announce the duration to the public. The bid will be awarded to the bidder who made the last bid at the time the time has expired.
- You can set a maximum duration and dispense with setting incremental steps. In this simple variant of the American auction, you let a hat wander through the ranks of those present, and whoever wants can put an amount in the hat. When the time is up, a signal sounds and the item to be auctioned goes to the person who last put money in the hat.
example
In southern Germany and Austria, a bride's shoe is symbolically auctioned in this way among the wedding guests at wedding celebrations: the so-called bridal shoe auction . Often no fixed rate of increase is agreed, but the next bidder just pays the difference immediately. In many cases the groom is given the very last commandment so that the bride can leave the wedding in both shoes.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bridal shoe auction on www.ratgeber-hochzeitsspiele.de , accessed on December 15, 2013
- ↑ Bridal shoe auction on www.spielekiste.de ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 15, 2013
