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I don't know what the theory says but giving your bidders this rule of thumb works better in practice. Or at least it did some years ago

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What does the rule of thumb even say? How high should they bid when they see an attractive lot?

If your rule of thumb says that you should only start bidding after a third of the auctions are finished, I hope you see that there's a pretty obvious way for others to arbitrage against you.

Auction theory studies both optimal bids and optimal auction designs - imho it's one of the more useful areas of economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_theory

I get that it seems implausible that there's just money sitting around waiting to be picked up, but it was there. Used autos is a hugely fragmented industry that is only slowly consolidating. Bids + bid strategy are likely still extremely far from optimal. Probably more easy wins out there.

I believe you, sounds like you're actually doing some business in that area. You should really look into the theory then. Feel free to reach out if you need help.

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