How bidding works
Current Auction runs conventional English ascending-price timed auctions. It is not a penny auction and it is not a bidding-fee auction: you never pay to place a bid.
Proxy bidding
You enter the most you are willing to pay. We bid on your behalf only as much as needed to keep you in front, up to your maximum. If you max at $100 and someone else bids $60, the visible price becomes one increment above $60, not your full $100.
If two bidders enter the same maximum, the earliest accepted maximum wins. Raising your own maximum never moves the visible price.
Increments
A price-band ladder decides the next valid bid. The lot page always shows the exact next minimum bid, and the server rejects anything below it.
Reserves
A reserve auction only sells if a bidder's maximum reaches the reserve. You always see whether the reserve is met; you never see the amount. When a maximum reaches the reserve, the price jumps to it so everyone can see the lot is now sellable.
Soft close
A bid accepted in the final 120 seconds extends the auction by 120 seconds, and it keeps extending until a full window passes with no new bid. Nothing is decided by a last-second click.
The countdown in your browser is cosmetic. The server end time is what decides whether a bid is valid.
Before you can bid
- Verify your email address.
- Verify your phone number.
- Keep an active card on file. Cards are tokenized by our payments provider; we never see or store your card number.
Bids are binding
Winning a lot creates an order for the winning price plus disclosed shipping, tax where applicable and the payment-processing charge. Bids cannot be edited or withdrawn by ordinary users; a retraction needs a policy reason and an admin review, and the original bid is never deleted from the record.
Sellers cannot bid on their own lots
Sellers, and staff of the selling organization, are blocked from bidding on that organization's listings. We also score household, device and payment-instrument overlap and route suspicious patterns to a Trust & Safety queue.