Most of the cars are sold from online auctions. Bidding there takes place in real time by incrementally increasing bids by bidders from the starting price to the maximum value they are willing to offer the owner for a particular car.
Bidding for one car lasts for only 15 – 40 seconds, so you need to immediately clearly determine for yourself the maximum that you have to buy, since there will be no time for reflection and meetings.
Each car is traded at a certain time, which is assigned by the system in the morning on the day of the auction. Auctions are conducted continuously from 9.00 to 18.00 (at some auctions until 22.00) Japanese time, with a minimum time interval.
Each car is awarded a starting price by the auction system (0 – … yen), its function is that it is impossible to place a bid below the start, the bid must be at least 10,000 yen higher than the initial price. This is necessary in order to shorten the trading time.
If, for example, the owner wants to get at least 2,000,000 yen from the sale of the car, then it makes no sense to start trading it from scratch, so they put a starting price of 1,500,000 yen (for example) to shorten the bidding time and immediately weed out participants with insufficient budget for the purchase.
It is almost impossible to predict the outcome of the auction, since the owners inform the auction staff about the minimum desired cost of the car at the registration stage in the system. This information is strictly confidential.
So, having decided on the maximum bid for his budget, the person who wants to announce it to the Japanese broker in the morning on the day of the auction, who will participate in the auction on his behalf. Then just waits for the result.
For example, if you decide that you are ready to buy a car you like with a starting price of 730,000 yen for 1,000,000 yen, you inform your bid representative at the auction, who must have access to the auction system. At the appointed time, the broker starts bidding for you for the dream car in real time by incrementally increasing the bid (the auction step is equal to 3 000 – 5 000 yen, depending on the auction) from 730,000 yen to 1,000,000 yen.
If the broker made his last push of the button at 1,000,000 yen (plus the auction step, i.e., for example, 1,005,000 yen), and the bidding continues further, he simply retreats, since he has no right to dispose of someone else’s budget. In this case, you will not get the car, but it will be given to the one whose mouse click the system will fix last at the mark that will satisfy the desire of the owner of the car.
If the owner of the car informed the auction in advance that he is ready to give his car for at least 900,000 yen, and your broker’s click was recorded last at this mark, then the car will be given to him for 900,000 yen. But this is only if there are no competitors.
If, in addition to your broker, someone else is fighting for the car, then the car will be given to the most persistent participant for the price at which his click was recorded.
Note: it should be borne in mind that the auction button can be pressed by several participants at the same time, and if the system considers your broker’s press to be the third, for example, then 3 auction steps can be immediately added to the price at which he clicked.
It is important to understand that not all cars put up for auction leave the auction sold to those who want to buy them. In cases where the last fixed bid does not reach the desired minimum of the owner of the car, it simply remains unsold (You could see such cars in the sales statistics, their status is “Not Sold” or in Japanese “Nagare”).
In this case, there are 3 options for the development of events:
- After the auction has taken place, the car can be bought as a result of negotiations (“By Nego”), offering its amount (more than the one at which the auction stopped at least 30,000 yen), which satisfied the seller.
- If after the auction no one wanted to buy a car by agreement, the owner puts the car up for sale at a fixed-price stock, where he can get the desired amount of money for it.
- In the near future, the car can again be put up for auction at an auction, but when and at what it is up to the owner to decide.
If suddenly, among the current offers for the next auction, you see a car that you placed a bet on, but according to the results of the auction, it “went to nagare”, you can try to place a bet again, but, obviously, in order to buy it, you need to place a bet higher than the one on which it last stayed unsold.