Frequently Asked Questions
Most auctions, even live on-site auctions, are online today, including ours. Click on a FAQ to open the answer.
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Our online sales run on HiBid. You set up a free HiBid account one time. After that you still have to hit “Register to Bid” on each auction separately. It doesn’t carry over from one sale to the next, and that trips up a lot of people. We may ask for a credit card when you register. That’s to confirm you’re a real person. Nothing gets charged unless you win something and never come pay for it. Get registered a day or two ahead. Doing it while your item is closing is cutting it awful close.
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Yes. HiBid won’t let you open an account without one, and that’s where your outbid notices and your invoice go. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, whatever you’ve got is fine. Put us in your contacts so the invoice doesn’t end up in junk mail. If getting an email set up is the thing stopping you, call the office at 605-431-9330. We’ve walked plenty of folks through it.
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A max bid is just the most you’re willing to pay. You put that number in and the computer bids for you, one increment at a time, and it never goes past your number. Plenty of people win for well under their max. It beats sitting at the screen all evening. One thing worth knowing: if two people enter the same max, whoever entered it first takes the lot. So don’t sit on it.
Worried about giving away your top number? Nobody here sees it
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Two things are going on. Lots don’t all close at once. They go in catalog order, about one to four a minute, so you can watch how you’re doing as the sale winds down. And we use a soft close: bid in the last minute and that lot picks up another minute. Somebody jumping in with two seconds left doesn’t get to steal it out from under you. You’ll get your chance to answer them.
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Yes, and we’d rather you did. Every auction has a preview date posted on it, and if that day doesn’t work we’ll usually open up by appointment. Just call. Everything sells as-is. We take a lot of photos and write the descriptions as straight as we know how, but a description isn’t a guarantee. What you see when you look at it is what counts. Too far away to drive in? Call or email and we’ll go put hands on the item and tell you what we find.
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You’ll get an invoice by email once the auction finishes closing. It lists what you won, your total, and the fees. You can also log in to HiBid any time and look at your results there. If a couple of hours go by and there’s nothing, check your spam folder first. That’s usually where it is. Still nothing, call us at 605-431-9330.
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Three things can land on your invoice: a buyer’s premium, which you’ll see called an online auction fee, South Dakota sales tax, and a processing fee if you pay by card. The actual numbers are printed in the terms on every auction page. Read them before you bid, because they aren’t always the same from one sale to the next. If you’re tax exempt, get your certificate to us before you bid and the tax comes off by itself. Makes checkout quicker, too.
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Cash, check, or a major credit card. Cash and checks we take in person during checkout hours. Cards run with a processing fee, and that’s spelled out in the auction terms. If you can’t get here during the posted hours, tell us before checkout ends, not after. When an invoice sits unpaid past settlement we can run the card on file, and nobody enjoys that phone call. Easier to just let us know ahead of time.
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The dates, times, and address are on the auction page. Most of our sales get picked up at 14139 SD Highway 36 in Hermosa, but estate and farm sales usually come off the property they sold from, so check before you drive out. Loading is on you. Bring help, bring straps, bring a truck or trailer that fits what you bought. If you won something heavy, figure out how you’re moving it before the day you show up.
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Call us at 605-431-9330 before checkout ends. We work this out all the time for people driving in from out of state. What doesn’t work is going quiet. Items nobody picks up and nobody called about are considered forfeited, and the invoice can still be charged. One phone call ahead of time and none of that happens.
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Smaller items, yes. When shipping is available on a sale it says so right on the auction. Furniture, tools, equipment, anything big or breakable is pickup only. It really depends on the item, so if shipping is the only way you can get it, call or email before you bid. We’d rather sort that out first than after you’ve won it. Packing and freight get billed on top of your invoice.
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Actual shipping cost plus a $5 handling fee per invoice. It gets billed in two pieces, and that catches people off guard, so here’s the order it happens in. When the auction closes, your card is charged through HiBid for the items you won. Then we pack your shipment and generate a label through Point to Ship. Once that label is made, you’ll get an email with the shipping details and a second invoice covering the freight and the $5. If a lot is big, awkward, or hard to pack safely, the handling runs more than $5. We aren’t responsible for damage in transit, so ask us about insurance on anything fragile or valuable.
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We do, but most of what we sell now goes online. A timed online sale puts the items in front of a lot more buyers and lets people bid over several days instead of standing in a yard all afternoon. Some things still sell better live. Certain estates, farm sales, real estate. We run those when they come along. The Auction Calendar lists everything, and if you get on our notification list you’ll hear about both kinds.
Question we didn’t cover, or thinking about selling? Call us at 605-431-9330, email info@ramseyauctions.us, or have a look at Sell With Us and Selling an estate at auction: where to start.