Increments, extensions, and what happens if you win and then change your mind.
Auction rules are usually written to protect the auctioneer. These are written to be read by the person bidding, which means saying plainly what happens in the awkward cases rather than only in the tidy ones.
The rules, in full.
Bidding
- Minimum increment
- £10 up to £500, then £25 up to £2,000, then £100
- Maximum bid
- You can leave one. It bids up on your behalf and stops at your limit
- Retracting a bid
- Not possible once placed. Every auction works this way for good reason
- Bidder identity
- Shown as a number. Names are never published
Closing
- Scheduled close
- Sunday, 8pm, for every lot
- Anti-sniping
- A bid in the last five minutes extends the close by five minutes
- Maximum extension
- None. It runs until five clear minutes have passed
- Reserve not met
- The lot does not sell, and the result says so
After the hammer
- Contact
- Within one working day
- Payment
- Within five working days
- Non-payment
- The lot goes to the underbidder at their bid, and the account is closed
- Cancellation rights
- Auction purchases sit outside most distance-selling cancellation rights, which is unusual and is why it is stated here
Consumer contract regulations treat public auctions differently from ordinary online sales. That is a real difference in your rights and it belongs at the top of a page rather than in a schedule.
Why the anti-sniping extension exists.
Because without it, the winning strategy in every online auction is to place one bid in the final two seconds. That produces a hammer price below what the lot was worth, a lot of irritated underbidders, and an auction that rewards software rather than interest.
A five-minute extension turns the ending back into an auction: if you want it, you have to outbid the person who also wants it, in the open, until one of you stops.
It makes the closing time unpredictable, which is a genuine inconvenience. We think it is a smaller one than losing every lot to a script.
The awkward cases, stated plainly.
| If this happens | This is what we do |
|---|---|
| You win and change your mind | The lot goes to the underbidder and your account is closed. There is no cooling-off period on an auction |
| Two bids arrive in the same second | The one recorded first wins, and the timestamps are visible in the history |
| The site falls over during the close | The auction is extended by an hour from the point it comes back, and everybody bidding is told |
| A lot is withdrawn before the close | All bids are void and everybody who bid is told why. This has happened once, over a welfare issue |
| The winner cannot make the date, on an experience lot | Two reschedules, then a refund. Farming dates move and we are not going to be difficult about it |
| You suspect somebody is bidding up their own lot | Tell us. Shill bidding is fraud, and every bid on this floor is placed from an identified account |
What an auction actually is, contractually.
A lot listed at auction is an invitation to treat. Each bid is an offer. The fall of the hammer — here, the close of the clock — is the acceptance, and that is the moment a contract is formed.
That matters because it is the reason a bid cannot be retracted and the reason there is no cooling-off period. It is also the reason the reserve has to be honoured: once the reserve is met, the auctioneer cannot decline to sell simply because the price disappointed them.
None of this is unusual. It is simply not usually explained.
And the standing caveat
This is a demonstration build. No auction here is live, no bid is binding, no payment is taken and no lot is allocated. The rules above describe how a real version would work, and a real version would need consumer auction terms reviewed by somebody qualified.
The lots.
Six of them, all closing at eight on Sunday.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
Public filings, published rankings and press reporting, each labelled on the page as a verified record, a founder claim or a third-party estimate.
The words are ours. The brands are not, and nothing here is licensed.
