For every lot sold there is a winner, and behind the winner there is an underbidder: the person who wanted the lot almost as much and stopped one increment short. The winner’s name goes on the invoice. The underbidder’s name is, for the purpose of the next sale, at least as valuable, because the underbidder is a confirmed, qualified buyer for that kind of lot at roughly that price who went home with nothing.
Why the underbidder matters
For the lot itself. If the winner fails to pay, the underbidder is the first person to offer it to, at their final bid. If the lot was bought in, the underbidder is the first person to offer it to after the sale, at the reserve.
For the next consignment. An auction house pitching for a collection can show the consignor not only what similar lots made but how many bidders competed for them. Underbidders are the depth of the market.
For marketing. An email to the underbidders on last season’s Morgan dollars when a run of Morgan dollars comes in will outperform any general mailing, because every recipient has already proved they will bid.
Recording underbidders
In a live sale the clerk records the winning paddle and, in a well-run sale, the underbidding paddle as well, which takes a second and is often skipped. Absentee bids that lost are underbids too, and so are every losing online bid, which an online platform records automatically. The gap is on marketplaces: some will give the auction house the underbidders, some will not, and on the ones that will not the auction house has paid a commission to generate a list of qualified buyers it is not allowed to see.
Underbidders in the CRM
An auction house CRM should attach every bid, winning or not, to a permanent client record, so that a collector’s history shows what they bought, what they bid on and lost, and at what level. That record is what makes building long-term collector relationships a process rather than a memory, and it is built from underbids more than from purchases, because most bidders lose most of the time. Circuit records every bid on every channel against the client, and the lot record shows the underbidder next to the buyer the moment the hammer falls.
