[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

If you are a seller and you put a reserve on a horse, you don't need to bid. The sales company will actually bid against buyers until the reserve is met. So if you are a buyer and you are bidding, sometimes you aren't even bidding against anyone. You are just bidding against the sales company, but you won't know it at the time. They are bidding against you and you think you are bidding aginst another buyer but you are not.

This isn't a secret. That's what a reserve is. If a seller tells the sales company to put a $300,000 reserve on a horse, the sales company is not allowed to sell the horse for less than $300,000. So if someone bids $200,000 and there are no other bids, the sales company has to bid $210,000. If the buyer then bids $220,000, then the sales company has to bid $230,000. They have to do this until the $300,000 reserve is met. If the sales company bids $230,000 and that is the final bid, then the horse will be listed in the results as $230,000 RNA. RNA means "reserve not attained". In a case like that, if you are a buyer you can go to the consignor after the sale and ask him how much he wants for the horse. We have bought a lot of horses like this. If we suspect that we are bidding aginst the sales company, we would stop bidding immediately and try to buy the horse after the sale.

well, that explained perfectly something i had wondered about! i'd see that a horse was reserve not met, and that they then sold the horse for less than the final bid, which made no sense unless of course they only sold part of the horse.