Chummy at Mathewsons

[Mike Costigan]

To be fair, I would have thought that estimate of £12-13,000 was realistic, even a tad optimistic; the selling price, as Howard suggests, must be the result of auction fever.

[Austin in the Shed]

In Scotland we have an "offers over" system when buying homes.

The estate agents will often list homes at amounts that are low to attract lots of bids and interest.  The sale price often bares no resemblance to the "offers over" price.

20 years ago, in a fit of complete lunacy, we bid £103000.00 over the asking price for a cottage near Aberfoyle - thankfully there were people prepared to offer more and we were spared a life of debt. 

The cottage was nice, but not that nice!

In short, the undervaluing of items is a superb strategy to ensure lots of interest and bidding...

Not necessarily so.I put a vintage car though auction after “Being advised to put a low reserve to attract the buyers bull” Which I did for in the auction mine and 2 other vintage cars in it failed to get any where near their reserves ,however unknown to me deep in the terms and conditions they had a lien ? Which allowed them 14 days to find a buyer to pay the in my case very low value of the vehicle.
So if going that route only set a reserve you are totally happy to accept.

[Ruairidh Dunford]

There will always be an exception, Dave.

[goodwoodweirdo]

its not just Austin's but pre-war across the board...

[ettore]

It’s not just prewar, it’s across the board. Dangerous time to go with no-reserve, or a great time to buy!

[Ivor Hawkins]

As I mentioned earlier, the popular working man’s pre war cars are a good buy at the moment, it seems only the rare and desirable cars are meeting reserve and although that Austin Seven van is desirable, it made way over what I thought it would…quite a good bit of telly actually.

[Ian Wegg]

Auction houses frequently set low estimates to attract interest, wait and see what it actually gets. 

To illustrate the point, this lot from Mathewson's April sale on Bangers & Cash last night

https://www.mathewsons.co.uk/auction/lot...?lot=13169

Sold for 36% above the mid-estimate. The same result on the Chummy above would see it fetch £11.5k

My prediction was almost spot on, as noted in the new thread it sold for £11,300.

Chummy Auction