Reading a lot page
Open any lot and the column beside the photographs is where the auction actually happens. It holds what the bottle stands at, whether the seller's reserve has been reached, how much company you have, when the evening ends — and the single field you need in order to bid.
This page takes that column apart. What follows is a copy of it, held still and numbered, with an explanation of every part beside it. Read it now with nothing at stake, and the closing evening asks nothing of you but a number.
Nine numbered parts
Everything the column shows you
One clock for the auction
Every lot closes at the same moment
Your maximum stays private
No bidder or seller ever sees it
10% buyer's fee
Added on top of the hammer price
Part by part
Below is the column of a lot you are winning, halfway through an auction: bids on it already, a reserve that has not been reached, and a couple of days left on the clock. Every part is numbered, and the numbers are explained beside it.
Lot #20907 • Category: Rum
Current bid: € 640
This lot has a reserve price. Reserve price has not been met.
You are currently not watching this lot.
Add to your watchlistThe current bid is yours.
Your maximum bid is € 700. You can update your maximum bid below.
Select your max bid
Or quickly pick one of these
Wondering what this bottle would really cost you? Commission, excise duty, shipping and VAT for your own country, worked out to the cent for any bid.
Work out what it costs →This lot has 12 bids and 7 watchers.
Ensure, before placing a bid, that the lot meets your expectations. Also, check the quality notes.
Current closing time: 26 July 21:28 CEST.
Please note: the entire auction will be extended by 10 minutes if a bid is placed in the last 10 minutes on any lot. After 22:00, the extension is 5 minutes. All time in CEST.
The lot number is what everything else hangs on: our answer to a question, the invoice, the label on the box that eventually turns up. Beside it is the category the bottle was catalogued under.
Underneath stands the current bid — the highest bid placed so far, and what the lot would sell for if the auction closed this second. Before anybody has bid it reads "No bids yet" and shows the starting price instead.
A bottle sold by a business rather than by a private collector also carries the EU + VAT mark here, beside the lot number, and a line or two more further down the column. Those lots are covered in the section below.
A seller may put a floor under their bottle. Until the bidding passes that floor this line tells you the reserve has not been met, and the lot will not change hands however long the bidding goes on.
The moment it is met the warning turns green, and from then on the bottle goes to whoever is highest when the hammer falls. A lot with no reserve at all says so in the same place.
One click puts the lot on your watchlist, where it sits with everything else you are keeping an eye on. Watching is free, invisible to everybody else and commits you to nothing.
It is the sensible first move on a bottle you are not sure about: a shortlist built over the nine days is a great deal easier to work through than the whole catalogue on the closing evening.
As soon as you have bid on a lot, the column opens with your own position: in green that the current bid is yours, in red that somebody has gone past you.
When you are ahead it also shows your maximum. This is the only place that figure ever appears — no other bidder can see it, and neither can the seller.
The one field you need. Pick the highest amount you are willing to pay for the bottle and the platform takes it from there, bidding on your behalf one step at a time, going only as high as it has to in order to keep you in front, and never past your limit.
So the number you choose is a ceiling, not a payment. If nobody comes near you, you win for far less than you entered.
The next few valid amounts, ready to click. They are ordinary maximum bids — the same thing you would have picked from the list — for when you simply want to move the price along.
Each of them is the current bid plus one or more bidsteps, and how large a bidstep is depends on where the bidding has got to.
The hammer price is not the bill. This works out the whole of it for any amount you care to try: our buyer's fee of 10%, VAT where it applies, excise duty, and shipping to your own address.
Ten seconds well spent before you settle on a maximum, particularly if you are bidding from outside the Netherlands.
How much company you have. The number of bids is how often the price has actually moved; the number of watchers is how many people are following the lot without having bid on it yet.
Plenty of watchers and hardly any bids is the normal picture for most of the nine days — it means everybody is waiting for the last evening, and it is exactly why a maximum bid beats sitting up.
When the auction closes — the auction, not this lot. Everything in the catalogue ends at the same moment, on one clock.
That moment moves. A bid on any bottle in the last 10 minutes holds the whole auction open for another 10, so the time in the column is the earliest it can end rather than the time it will.
EU + VAT lots
Most of what we auction belongs to private collectors, and on those lots the hammer price behaves exactly as the column above describes it. A minority comes from businesses inside the European Union — shops, traders, the occasional distillery — and those are settled under different tax rules.
Such a lot is marked EU + VAT, and its column carries two or three lines the one above does not. They are worth reading closely, because they are the difference between the amount you bid and the amount on your invoice.
Lot #21114 • Category: Whisky
Current bid: € 220
This lot is sold by a Belgian business seller.
More information
If you have this lot shipped to the Belgium, you do not have to pay excise duty. Learn more about excise duty
This lot is sold by a business seller. If you are a citizen from the EU, then excise duty is applicable. More information
If you're a resident of the European Union and you win a EU + VAT lot, please note that VAT will be added on top of the hammer price. This is not optional, and the VAT rate will be based on the country where you live.
More information
A lot sold by a business inside the EU carries the EU + VAT mark at the top of its column, next to the lot number. It is the first thing to look for, and it is the only marking on the platform that changes how your invoice is put together.
Everything else in the column reads the same as before: the current bid is still the hammer price, the reserve still a floor, the closing time still the whole auction's.
If you live in the European Union and win an EU + VAT lot, VAT is added to the hammer price at the rate of your own country: German buyers pay German VAT, French buyers French VAT. It is a legal obligation rather than a choice of ours, and it is not negotiable.
Bidding from outside the EU? Then no VAT is added at all, and the lot behaves like any other. What your own customs make of the parcel on arrival is a separate matter.
This is where the two shapes on the left differ. On a lot whose duty has already been settled in the seller's own country, a delivery that stays inside that country attracts no excise duty a second time — and if that is where you live, the column tells you so in as many words.
A lot still under duty suspension has had no excise paid on it yet, so the duty falls due wherever in the EU it is delivered, yours included. The column says that plainly too, without a flag beside it.
Two tax rules, your country of residence and the seller's all bear on the same bottle, which is precisely the situation the cost link in the column was built for. It takes the amount you are considering and works the whole invoice out for your own address, VAT and duty included.
Our page on excise duties explains what the duty actually is and why it is charged where it is. Anything left over after that, ask us before you bid rather than afterwards.
From a number to a bid
Picking an amount is not the same as placing a bid, and there is a step in between where a typed digit too many can still be caught. This is the whole sequence, from the field in the column to the moment somebody outbids you.
Nothing goes in on the first click. We show you the bottle, the maximum you picked and what it would come to with our buyer's fee of 10% on top, and ask whether you want to proceed.
Lots that are sold with VAT on top of the hammer price say so here as well. Read the two lines, then confirm — a bid is binding from the second click onwards.
Your maximum goes on the lot and then spends as little of itself as it can: one bidstep above whoever is behind you, no more, and it stops dead at your limit.
So a maximum of seven hundred against a rival who gives up at five hundred wins the bottle at five hundred and a step, not at seven hundred.
If somebody goes past your maximum we email you, provided you have left outbid emails switched on in your notification settings. The column tells you the same thing in red the moment you open the lot again.
From there you either raise your maximum or let it go. A maximum can always be raised; it can never be lowered or withdrawn, which is the whole reason it is worth thinking about before you enter it.
The same column, elsewhere
The column above is what a signed-in bidder sees on a lot that is still running. Who is looking at it, and whether the auction has closed, changes what it holds — and the changes are worth recognising before you meet one of them.
Everything except the bidding is there: the current bid, the reserve, the number of bids and watchers, the closing time. Browsing an auction has never needed an account, and it never will.
In the place where the bid field would be, the column invites you to sign in or open an account. That takes a couple of minutes, and it is the only thing standing between you and a bid.
A seller looking at their own lot sees the same figures and no bid field — you cannot bid on your own bottle, and the column says so rather than leaving you to work it out.
What it does offer is your reserve. While the auction runs you can lower it from your selling pages, which is worth considering on a lot that has watchers but no bids.
The current bid becomes the hammer price, the bidding disappears from the column and the lot page turns into a record: what it sold for, and in which auction.
Nothing can be added after that moment. It is also the point at which our archive becomes useful — thousands of closed lots that tell you what a bottle actually fetched, rather than what it was asked for.
If we found something on the bottle worth flagging — a critical issue, or a condition note — a line at the foot of the column says so and takes you straight to the part of the description that explains it.
Follow it before you bid. Every bottle passes across our table in Groningen, so a flag there is something we have seen with our own eyes rather than a disclaimer.
While you have the column in front of you
No. Your maximum is shown to you and to nobody else — not to the other bidders, not to the seller, not on the lot page and not in the bid history. What everybody sees is the current bid, which is only ever as much of your maximum as it took to stay in front.
That is the whole mechanism. If your ceiling were visible, the next bidder would simply step over it, and there would be no point in setting one.
Somebody did bid — a maximum that was already sitting on the lot answered it. When your bid arrives under an existing maximum, that maximum replies immediately, one bidstep above you, and the price appears to move on its own.
It is also why a lot can go from your bid to a higher figure in the same second: you did not lose to a faster clicker, you lost to a number that was set days earlier.
Three reasons cover almost every case: you are not signed in, the lot is one you are selling yourself, or the auction has already closed. In each case the column says which of the three it is.
There is a fourth, rarer one. Accounts that have not been completed, or that we have had to restrict, keep the whole catalogue but lose the bidding until that is sorted out — and the column will point you at us.
It is the design. A bid on any lot in the last 10 minutes extends the entire auction by 10 minutes, and after ten in the evening by five, so the time in the column is the earliest the auction can end rather than the time it will.
The auction ends when a full extension period passes with nobody bidding on anything at all, and then every lot closes at the same moment. It is what makes sniping pointless here, and it is the best argument there is for setting a maximum and going to bed.
No. A bid binds you from the moment it is confirmed, because the seller and every other bidder are relying on it. A maximum can be raised as often as you like; it can never be reduced or taken back.
The one exception is an obvious error — a digit too many, or the wrong lot altogether. Tell us straight away and we will look at it. Once the auction has closed there is very little anybody can do.
Yes, if you want the bottle. A reserve is a floor, not a target: bidding is what carries the price towards it, and a lot that reaches its reserve while you are highest is a lot you have won.
If the reserve is never reached the bottle does not sell and your bid simply lapses — you are not committed to anything. Sellers can also lower a reserve while the auction runs, and a lot with genuine interest on it is exactly the sort they lower.
It says the bottle is being sold by a business inside the European Union rather than by a private collector, and that its tax is settled differently as a result. If you live in the EU, VAT at your own country's rate is added on top of the hammer price on such a lot — not optional, and not something we can waive.
Excise duty then depends on the lot: one whose duty has already been settled in the seller's country attracts none again if the delivery stays inside that country, while a lot still under duty suspension attracts it wherever in the EU it goes. The column says which of the two you are looking at, and the section above takes it apart line by line.
The current bid is the hammer price and nothing else. On top of it come our buyer's fee of 10% and the VAT on that fee, plus shipping, and — depending on where the bottle is going — excise duty or import charges. On a lot marked EU + VAT there is VAT on the hammer price itself as well.
Rather than estimate, use the cost link that sits directly under the bidding. It takes any amount you like and works the whole bill out to the cent for your own address.
It keeps the bottle on your dashboard, where the lots you are actually interested in sit together instead of scattered through a catalogue of several hundred. Watching is free, it is invisible to everybody else, and it obliges you to nothing.
The watcher count in the column is the sum of everybody doing the same thing. Treat it as a rough measure of interest, not as a prediction — plenty of watchers never bid at all.
You can, and the column keeps the field open for exactly that. Some bottles are worth more to you on the closing evening than they were on the first morning, and a maximum you set a week ago is allowed to move with that.
Raising it changes nothing anybody else can see and it does not push the current bid up: your new ceiling is still only spent one step at a time, and only against somebody bidding against you. The rule is the same one as ever — up as often as you like, never back down.
The column above never moves. The ones in the current auction do — and they are a good deal more interesting. Open any lot, put the two side by side, and see how quickly it stops needing explaining.
