BBC Earth – The Travelling Elephant

If you’ve done any amount of buying on online auctions and have a general understanding of how the bidding system works, you’ve probably wondered how we work out the amount of the next “minimum bid” required for a bidder to bid on an auction. 

Vinyl Records Direct auctions only accept bids for a specific amount of time. To stay in the running, you must place a bid that is higher than the current bid. This amount is the current minimum bid – you must enter at least this amount if you want to bid.

You may pay less than your bid if you win. When you win an auction you always actually pay only a small amount more than the next highest bid. The table below shows you what the minimum increment is for the bid at each price level, you must bid at least as much as the current bid increment more than the current bid.