Auction houses...how to play the game.

I look at everything & even if I don't want it, I will work out what I would pay for it if it was cheap enough.
Then if the top bid is under my figure, I get it anyway, or find out later I missed a good deal on 1/2 a tin of case hardening powder & a industrial hand stapler..

Most of the time I'm there for a specific item though & most of the auction is just spent waiting anyway.

I like to get a good view of whats happening, several times I have messed up by not seeing what was for auction at the time, buying a bucket of odd mops & broken spades because the auctioneers OTHER hand was sitting on what I wanted...
And I thought I was getting a good deal....

I will push a unwanted items price up, in theory it leaves less $$ for spending at the finish of the auction & just because its worth more anyway.

Have a brightly coloured item in my auctioning hand, makes things easier for them to see when I'm bidding.
Take notice of whats on each side of the item I'm wanting, sometimes they will combine two items if no ones interested in one.

I try & go thru the auction items several days before (if its possible) just to get a good idea of whats there.
Then, just before the auction, I go thru it all again, just to make sure theres no changes, or to see what changes have been made.
Once I bid a bunch on a small box of stuff, only to find the certain item I wanted, was stolen out of the box beforehand.

If its a farm auction, take a vehicle with a big trailer, even if its not needed, sometimes its just plain logistics that stop other people from bidding.
Know the other bidders, some will sell of part of their 'buy' if they know they are just cutting their outlay & I get to spend less for want the 1 I want, not 3 of them... They 1/2 their outlay & keep both of what they wanted.

If someones gonna buy it anyway, I don't even try bidding against them, its helpful sometimes to chat with other bidders before the auction, some people have weird uses for weird stuff & will pay more than me for it in any case.

Do some research on odd items, yah don't know what its worth until you know what it is, or isn't...
Hench, selling a $90 item only to see it selling for $2000 reconditioned, last week.

A lot of good advice so far in this thread, though I personally don't agree with the idea of starting a $500 item at $250 to scare the other bidders off. Sometimes you'll get the item cheaper this way than if you had let it start lower but IMO and IME much more often if it had started at say $25 or $50 you would have gotten it for less than $250. The only time I bid like this is if I absolutely know that an item will sell for and I want to be the one that bids it. I used to do this sort of bidding at coin auctions, since after 10 lots of silver dollars sell for $30 each you probably know what the next 10 will sell for as well.

A few other tips:

Know a little about as many things as possible, and try to know absolutely everything about some specific items. Auction hunting for profit basically comes down to understanding the value of items better than the other customers, and knowledge is power. I can't tell you how many antique auctions I've been to where old computer equipment or video games or high end tools came up for sale that I got for next to nothing because I was the only person there that realized an Intellivision with 25 games was actually worth a lot more than the $5 I paid for it. Or the time that after memorizing the high end rare camera equipment brands that I saw a box of their parts in a box lot at an auction and got it for $2 and sold it for $200.

Know what still has 'use'. When presented with something I'm unfamiliair with, usually electronics related, I try to estimate what it cost new, and if it still has use. If I think it looks expensive, and it could potentially be worth something I'll drop a few dollars to speculate on it. I bought something that looked vaguely like a weird pencil sharpener at an auction for $7 just because it looked high tech and expensive. A little Googling told me it was a micron level metal surface roughness tester that retailed for $2000 new and I sold my used one for $350. For a year or two every auction I went to had at least one or two satellite reiceiver boxes. Back then people could reprogram the cards from them and these little things the size of credit cards sold for $50-150 each on ebay. I probably bought 40 or more of those boxes for just a couple dollars each, rarely more than $5 or $10 each all because I wondered if people could still use them and looked them up one day. The day the cable company did away with those cards was a sad one for me, hehe

Box lots are your friend! Many of my best auction finds were from box lots, which are where the auction company basically dumps all of their 'low end' items into boxes or piles or rows and sells them off quickly and often for just a few dollars at a time. Taking the time to sort through these box lots can reveal all sorts of stuff such as the package of fountain pens that were dumped in a box with all the other pens/pencils from a desk or the bag of brass door knobs burried in the box with old table cloths, etc.

Smart phones are your friend at auctions, I will often make a list of items I think could be worth something and go somewhere and discretely look them up to know exactly what I want to pay.

Be discrete yourself, if you broadcast to people that you are there to buy to resell, and they are at all savvy they will realize that you probably know what you are doing and that if you bid an item up to say, $100, the actual value is probably higher than that so it could encourage people to bid along with you. I had an issue with this at coin auctions once people picked up that I was buying to resell on eBay I had problems winning many auctions since a few regulars would use my own bidding as a barometer on when they should bid since I needed a decent profit margin.

Be subtle with your bidding, a flash of your card or hand and then a simple hand gesture or nod is sufficient for most auctioneers and it makes you look like less of an auction noob than if you are yelling your bids or waving your card wildly.

Sometimes an auction will be at a residence that is being cleared out. I've seen many times where the company pulls all sorts of stuff out of the house and garage then at the end of the auction says that up for bid is the remainder of what is in the barn, or the garage or whatever. There is often money to be made here! Often the stuff goes real cheap since all the "good" stuff has been pulled out and only the 'junk/garbage' is left. As scrappers we often know that junk is rusty gold but there is often more to be had than just metal items. My buddy bought the contents of a shed that had boxes of paper and other misc junk in it. He sorted through the paper and found a signed document from Abraham Lincoln. Sold it for like $10,000 at a high end auction.

What i do is too get too know the auction or go early, or i go inside too there there office, i tell em right up front, i dont care what it is, if it dont sell , put it over there, and i'll buy the whole pile outright, in short , so they dont have too call the garbage truck people in, over the years i made good money, like one auction , i wasnt even bidding , this was 5 piece log cabin sofa set, no bib, over in my corner it went, this was a very nice unit, hum , as i walked over , excepting the worst, i do have outlets for everything too dispose of, so no problem, just as i backed up and paid 45 for my corner, the bidder who showed up very late , that wanted that sofa, i said i bought it, what you want for i just top of mind said $350 for the set, sold, gee that was easy i said , scrapped out the rest, lawn mowers ,window fan, tons of alum window's, that took awhile too clean when i got home, my little corner netted me almoust 2 grand, that was my best haul .

That's an awesome story Everett, nice Job

Many times I'll go to auctions and my primary goal is re-sellable antiques, coins or some jewelry and I find that everything is being bid up past what I want to spend.

When this happens, I have been successful bidding on the copper, brass, stainless, etc. items...........no matter how ugly ......and getting them fairly cheap. Has paid the gas bill and more for many a auction where the main goal had struck out.