When you use our Japanese car auction online search system, you will find that even similar cars may have wildly varying start prices.
Now, the start price is simply the price at which bidding is going to start (as the name suggests), so why do we see such a big variation in start prices at auction? It seems like there are two main schools of thought among auction sellers:
Start low and build momentum
The first of these is that the seller should start the bidding well below his desired selling price. The idea of this being that this then allows the bidding competition to gain momentum, which will then push the final price up higher.
Start high to quickly get to the desired price
This other school of thought is that a seller should set his price high – as close to his desired sale price as he thinks he can get. The logic behind this is that it then only takes one or two buyers to click through a bid, and the price will be over his reserve price and he will have made the sale.
Start prices and bidding strategy
Most of the time, it is only when a start price is higher than market value that it affects the bidding outcome
Having bought thousands of cars for customers, and seen many tens of thousands of bids, it is my opinion that the only time that the start price really can influence the outcome of bidding is when it is so high that it is actually above the market price for the car, which as a result fails to sell.
Apart from that, really the only information you can get from the start price is that it tells you the lowest amount you can bid. At the end of the day, it seems clear to me that the amount a car will end up selling for will be the value the market assigns to it through competition with other bidders, and with reference to similar vehicles sold in the past.
Rather than looking at the start price, how much you decide to bid needs to be based on your budget and what similar cars are being sold for at the auctions in Japan.
We find that the most successful importers really understand how it all works - from the auction to the ship and beyond. Don't get left behind!
