I DO a number of antique evenings and talks which normally end with a question and answer session. There are a number of questions which frequently reoccur and I thought this would be a good opportunity to address some of them.

What is a commission bid? Does it mean that's what I have to pay? What happens when two bids are the same?

In these busy times many are unable to spend a whole day at a sale waiting for the one lot that they want to buy to come up. They will leave the maximum price they are prepared to pay for it with the auctioneer who will then bid on their behalf just as if they were in the room in person.

If successful, the auctioneer will then buy it as inexpensively as other bids and a reserve - the seller's minimum acceptable price - allow. If two people leave the same commission bid the one that is left first is normally successful.

This all seems abundantly clear and simple but occasionally things can go awfully wrong for example when the absent bidder leaves a bid on the wrong lot. Worse still, was an instance that occurred in a friend's saleroom some years ago. A collector asked one of the porters how much a particular lot would make "about £30" was the response.

The collector asked the porter to bid on the lot for him. "How much to?" the porter asked. "I really want it so just buy it for me - but don't let anyone else know what I've asked you to do." Some moments later another collector approached a different porter and, having asked how much the second porter thought the same lot would make, basically asked him to "just buy" the same lot - "but don't let anyone else know what I've asked you to do".

A recipe for disaster that ended as the bidding eventually stopped at £460 when one of the porters got cold feet. When the successful buyer was told how much the porter had bought the lot for he did a very passable impersonation of Mount Etna erupting. My friend, the auctioneer, ended up paying for the mistake to keep all parties concerned happy and never again was anyone allowed to leave a bid with anyone except the auctioneer.

TOP TIP: Firmly set your maximum price and stick to it. My job as auctioneer is to try and sell the buyer something he wants, but for just a little more than he intended paying for it. How do I do that? - Well, I think it must be down to charm!