Surprising Response on Gunbroker
 

I usually go through the LB&S listings on Gunbroker every other Sunday and watchlist some of the more interesting C&R and Antique guns which show up.
Several generally nice to OK Parkers this week, but a pretty nnice GHE 20 gauge was there. Short barrels, straight stock, two ivory beads on a concave tapered rib, good dimensions, decent wood, checkered butt with no plate. Only negative was a little wear on the stock/checkering and I personally didn't think the wood fit was up to the normal Parker standards. Loose in places, proud in some and low in some. Has a nice looking case.

What surprised me was the bidding response. Generally unless it is a very inexpensive gun, the real money stays out of the game until most of the two weeks is gone. In this case,even though the gun doesn't appear in the serialization book and no Letter was presented in the listing, a small number of bidders drove the price up to nearly $4000 in one day with essentially 2 weeks left in the auction. Seems like an abnormal reaction?

Thats about half of what a nice GHE 20 would bring. But the gun in question has been re-stocked and new colors. It would be a fine shooter/hunter though!

There was a very very nice GHE Remington gun 20 gauge 28” that the auction ended Sunday . It started at $9999.99 , gun was close at a shop I know so I went and looked at it . Very nice except for a later gold initial inlay in the front of the trigger guard . Anyway Gun recieved no bids .

Those “except for”s are killers.

I was most amazed by the speed with which the bidding progressed with no real way to document any of the details. You seldom see any significant bidding until the end of an auction (it's auction rule number one, don't drive yourself up). A few weeks ago, there was a composed pair of 1920's H&H Badmintons (well documented by H&H) that stayed in the 1000 to 2000 range almost the entire auction and then zoomed into the teens the last half day or so. I couldn't fathom what would drive five or six bidders to drive that Parker to 2/3 of its value in less than a day. It seems like a case of Parker fever broke out.

I will sometimes place a minimum first bid just to hold the gun, not expecting to get it at that price. Anything other than that, until the last 15 minutes, is a waste of time and energy. Some people never learn.

Ive been playing GB auctions both ways for years . If you wanna "try" and sneak a bid in do it with 20 minutes to go and not less then 15 minutes . If you do it at less than 15 minutes all it does is reset for another 15 minutes .

I've done that before also. If someone bids over me I wait until the 15 minutes is almost up, and keep doing this until the other bidder gives up. Of course I have a limit in mind that I won't bid higher than, but I have outlasted a few.
I think one reason people place bids early on is to get the bottom feeders to drop out early so they won't get caught up in the auction frenzy at the end and just drive the price even higher.

If it's a gun that I'd like to have but I'm not all that worked up over I may bid the highest amount I'm comfortable with, and leave it at that. That way I don't have to be "there" when the gavel is about to drop, to sneak in another bid. Downside is you may leave some money laying on the table. Upside is you don't have to raise bids over and over.

I've won a few nice guns that way, and actually never felt like I overpaid for any of them, because I was careful what I figured my top dollar to be. I'm a big fan of silent auctions. They go a long way towards eliminating emotion from the bidding, IMO.

As Reggie said earlier this one has been completely refinished and the numbers do not match. Frame and trigger tang are 152790 while the SFE is 153790. Interesting also is the fact that the barrel loop has a #2 on it that would seemingly indicate it was part of a 2 barrel set yet the incorrectly numbered SFE lacks the number we typically see with 2 barrel sets indicating which barrel set it goes with. I know, that was not the subject matter of the thread but....