we had that happen to us at a auction while trying buy a skidloader.

the guy was a older fellow that had a small construction business, he was mostly into concrete flat work so he had a pretty decent line of tools related to that.     he had a bobcat s175, I think it was,  so I was asking one of his buddies about it, he gave a good report of it, and in the conversation he kinda let it slip what they were hoping to get out of it, the figure seemed reasonable enough, it was gonna be a small auction, so if if no one was interested I figured i'd be bidding against the owner in some way or form.

so the day of the auction arrived and we attended, like I said it was kinda small, and not very well attended, and I kept thinking, "boy this skidloader is gonna be cheap".   so they came to the skidloader and it wasn't going well they were about $5-6000 under market, I had the bid after a couple of halfhearted half bids.     they hadn't announced a reserve before bidding, so it looked like I was going to get a cheap skidloader.

I was watching the crowd, the auctioneer took alittle break in the action, like they do when a item isn't selling well,  when they got back at it all of a sudden there was another bidder.        now i'm no rocket scientist but it was pretty easy to figure out what was going on, I identified the individual that was supposedly bidding, he was the 16 year old nephew of one of the sellers buddies.

so I let them have their way for awhile, then the bid got to the acceptable price that was indicated to me previously.  which was still a decent price, and they blew right on by it, I was thinking what the heck?  the owner obviously had this kid bidding for him,  so I was thinking, lesson time, wonder how high they are willing to push it? so kept right on a bidding, got $3000 above where I thought they would stop, and I quit.  so I thought that is that.         

later the next day I get a call from my son( we were visiting my daughter--vacation)  hey this guy is looking for you, something about buying a skidloader, I recognized the name as the guy that had the auction.     so I let it be for a few days, then called him back, sure enough he was trying to sell that skidloader.   

after a few words of lame explanation of why the winning bidder didn't take it, I cut in and told him that I very well knew what was going on, and that I was going to let the bid go to the kinda agreed upon price, but when you fricking clowns tried to get greedy it was lesson time,  so if you want me to buy it from you now, it's going to be number where your boy jumped in.      

well there was a kinda long pause, then he mentioned something about bad advice, and something about me helping him out a little bit( I think he actually had to sell the stuff).   and that he couldn't find anybody to buy it, and on and on.    my response was this," you made your bed now lie in it". 

I don't anything about it, but if they really got hacked it's a difficult situation for everyone.  No matter what they do they can't please everyone.

Speaking of by-bidding, I was at a consignment auction several years ago.  On the back row were some augers and a belt conveyor.  I decided to see if I could buy it cheap.  I threw out a low ball bid to get it started then kept bidding.  Then I realized i was the only person there.  Everyone else either was not paying attention or walking off.  I stopped bidding. After an uncomfortable lack of bidding one of the ringmen tried to get me to bid again.  I told him I wasn't bidding against the guy in the tree.  When he asked what I meant?  I told him I was watching the auctioneer and the other bidder seemed to be up in the trees because that was where the auctioneer was looking. He begged me to bid one more time, so I raised my bid $10 and bought it.