Auction

These contexts include antiques, paintings, rare collectibles, expensive wines, commodities, livestock, radio spectrum, used cars, real estate, online advertising, vacation packages, emission trading, and many more.

Didius Julianus won the auction at the price of 6,250 drachmas per guard,[clarification needed][9][10][11] an act that initiated a brief civil war.

[4] In China, the personal belongings of deceased Buddhist monks were sold at auction as early as the seventh century AD.

[13] The practice rapidly became popular, and in 1660 Samuel Pepys' diary recorded two occasions when the Admiralty sold surplus ships "by an inch of candle".

Pepys also relates a hint from a highly successful bidder who had observed that, just before expiring, a candle-wick always flares up slightly: on seeing this, he would shout his final – and winning – bid.

[14][15] Sotheby's, currently the world's second-largest auction house,[14] was founded in London on 11 March 1744, when Samuel Baker presided over the disposal of "several hundred scarce and valuable" books from the library of an acquaintance.

[17] Other early auction houses that are still in operation include Göteborgs Auktionsverk (1681), Dorotheum (1707), Uppsala auktionskammare (1731), Mallams (1788), Bonhams (1793), Phillips de Pury & Company (1796), Freeman's (1805) and Lyon & Turnbull (1826).

At the time, Christie's established a reputation as a leading auction house, taking advantage of London's status as the major centre of the international art trade after the French Revolution.

The Great Slave Auction took place in 1859 and is recorded as the second largest single sale of enslaved people in U.S. history — with 436 men, women and children being sold.

[36] The economists Paul Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for the introduction of new auction types (or formats).

[60][61] From the seller's perspective, advertising an auction as having no reserve price can be desirable because it potentially attracts a greater number of bidders due to the possibility of a bargain.

[61] This contrasts with a reserve auction, where the item for sale may not be sold if the final bid is not high enough to satisfy the seller.

[64] However, potential bidders may be able to deduce an approximate reserve price, if one exists at all, from any estimate given in advance by the auction house.

All-pay auctions are primarily of academic interest, and may be used to model lobbying or bribery (bids are political contributions) or competitions such as a running race.

When an auction's time period expires, the highest bidder wins the item and must pay a final bid price.

[98][99] Indian Premier League (IPL) started annual public auctioning of cricket players in 2008 as an entertainment for mass consumption.

Auctions were traditionally used as an alternative to the private sale/treaty method to sell property that, due to their unique characteristics, were difficult to determine a price for.

Subsequently, the auction systems' lack of transparency about the value of the property was brought into question, with estate agents and their vendor clients being accused of "under-quoting".

Significant attention was given to the matter by the Australian media, with the government in Victoria eventually bowing to pressure and implementing changes to legislation in an effort to increase transparency.

However, more recently, selling at auction has become an alternative to a normal property sale, due to the speedy nature of the entire process.

In most cases, investors can also place so-called non-competitive bids, which indicates interest to purchase the debt obligation at the resulting price, whatever it may be.

In certain jurisdictions, if a storage facility's tenant fails to pay rent, the contents of their locker(s) may be sold at a public auction.

[105] The wine auction business offers serious collectors an opportunity to gain access to rare bottles and mature vintages, which are not typically available through retail channels.

[108] Online auctions are a form of E-commerce that relies on the advantages of a digital platform's ability to overcome geographical constraints, provide real-time information and reduce transaction costs, bringing greater convenience to people and allowing more people to participate as bidders, as well as being able to view a greater selection of auctions.

Private electronic markets use combinatorial auction techniques to continuously sell commodities (coal, iron ore, grain, water, etc.)

[109] Firstly, online auctions might enable bidders to obscure their identities, such as utilizing pseudonyms or multiple accounts to maintain anonymity.

[113] Katehakis and Puranam provided the first model[125] for the problem of optimal bidding for a firm that in each period procures items to meet a random demand by participating in a finite sequence of auctions.

During an auction, the seller might possess more comprehensive knowledge regarding the item on offer compared to the buyer, creating an information asymmetry.

[127] This lack of information could lead the bidder to overvalue the item and consequently pay a higher price, resulting in the winner's curse.

[133][134][135] By agreeing to bid only against outsiders, never against members of the "ring", competition becomes weaker, which may dramatically affect the final price level.