The People Behind Every Lot: What Is the Difference Between Live and Timed Auctions?

Every lot that reaches a saleroom has already passed through five sets of hands, and each set owns a different decision. Knowing what is the difference between live and timed auctions matters, but it matters less, at first, than knowing who set the estimate, who fixed the reserve, who runs the close, who moves the work, and whose nerve settles the final price. This guide names each protagonist behind a single lot and the one call each of them actually makes, so a collector spending 50,000 to 500,000 euros a year knows whose judgement they are trusting at every step. The paddle is yours; the decisions that shaped the lot were not.

Key takeaways

• A specialist owns intake vetting and the catalogue entry; a consignor owns the reserve, the confidential minimum agreed with the house and usually set at or below the low estimate, as the Invaluable auction glossary sets out.
• In a live auction an auctioneer directs bidding in real time; in a timed auction a platform closes each lot at a fixed deadline with no auctioneer. That gap in who holds the gavel is the heart of what is the difference between live and timed auctions.
• The modern buyer's premium began at 10% in September 1975 at Christie's and Sotheby's in London; Phillips now applies standard cumulative rates of 34.8%, 26.4% and 18% on its lots.
• The underbidder, the second highest bidder, effectively sets the hammer price: the gavel falls roughly one increment above their final bid.
• LLB Auction rejects roughly 40% of submissions at intake and publishes a three-page condition report on every lot, with a 20% buyer's premium and 10% seller's commission disclosed upfront.

What a Lot Is, and Everyone Who Shapes It Before You Bid

A lot is the single unit a house offers for sale, one artwork or a grouped set, identified by a lot number that fixes its position in the running order. Answering what is a lot at auction is the easy part. The harder question is who decided it should be a lot at all, at what price, and on what terms. By the time a work carries a lot number, four people have already made binding calls about it, and a fifth, the underbidder, is waiting in the sale to make the last one.

What is the difference between live and timed auctions to a lot before it opens? At this stage, none: the lot number, the description and the estimate are fixed by people, not by the format the sale will use. The five protagonists are the specialist, the consignor, the auctioneer or platform, the registrar, and the underbidder. Each owns a decision that a catalogue entry rarely spells out, and a collector who can name the decision-holder at each step reads a sale the way a professional does, not as a wall of prices but as a chain of accountable judgements. The stages a work moves through, from first appraisal to crated dispatch, are traced in the stages a lot passes through from catalogue to crate.

The distinction matters most when something goes wrong. If an estimate looks high, the specialist owns it. If a lot fails to sell, the reserve, and therefore the consignor, owns it. If a settlement stalls, the registrar owns it. Knowing whose call it was tells you who to ask, and what to ask them.

The Specialist: Who Vets and Catalogues the Work

The specialist is the expert the house employs to authenticate, appraise, research and catalogue a work within a defined department, contemporary art in LLB Auction's case. Sotheby's describes its specialists as experts belonging to a specific collecting field, and the role is the same across houses: the specialist's judgement stands behind every claim in the catalogue entry. When a description reads "signed and dated verso" or assigns an estimate, the price range the house expects the work to reach, that is the specialist's assessment, not a marketing line.

What is the difference between live and timed auctions at the vetting stage? Nothing, because the specialist accepts or rejects a work long before any format runs. Intake vetting is where this protagonist's most consequential decision is made: whether to accept the work at all. LLB Auction rejects roughly 40% of submissions here. The discipline is deliberate, because the rejection is the product: anything that clears intake has passed a real threshold. The specialist also commissions the condition report, a factual account of a work's physical state, which LLB Auction publishes as a three-page document per lot. The report, not the sale patter, is the record the buyer relies on.

Here is what a specialist verifies before a lot is catalogued, and each item is a decision the collector inherits:

1. Attribution. Whether the work is by the named artist, by the studio, or after the artist, checked against the catalogue raisonne and the signature.
2. Provenance. The provenance, the documented chain of ownership, is traced to confirm clear title and flag any gap that could signal a dispute.
3. Authenticity evidence. Certificates, foundation stamps and prior sale records are gathered; the house documents evidence rather than asserting certainty.
4. Condition. Surface, support, restoration and losses are recorded in the condition report against which every future claim is measured.
5. Estimate. A low-to-high range is set from recent comparable results, anchoring the reserve conversation with the consignor.
6. Cataloguing. Medium, dimensions, edition number and exhibition history are fixed in the entry that becomes the sale's legal description.

The Consignor: Ownership, the Reserve Price and Warranties

The consignor is the owner who places a work with the house to sell, whether a private collector, a gallery or an estate. Houses rely on consignors for their entire inventory, and the consignor keeps ownership until the hammer falls. The decision this protagonist owns is the reserve price, the confidential minimum the seller will accept.

Answering what is the reserve price at an auction cleanly matters because it is the single figure that decides whether a lot sells. The reserve is agreed privately between the consignor and the house and is typically set at or below the low estimate, as the Invaluable auction glossary and Sotheby's both note. It is never published. If bidding fails to reach it, the lot is bought in, meaning it goes unsold and returns to the consignor. So what is the difference between live and timed auctions for the reserve? The number is identical; only its enforcement changes. In a live saleroom, Phillips states in its published Conditions of Sale that the auctioneer may place "floor" bids on the seller's behalf up to the reserve to protect it, a mechanic that does not exist once a timed sale is running on its own software.

The consignor also gives the warranties that stand behind the sale: that they hold clear title, that the description is accurate to their knowledge, and that they have disclosed known defects. Those warranties are why provenance work matters to a buyer even though the consignor, not the buyer, signs them. When a warranty is thin, a disciplined house declines the consignment rather than pass the risk downstream.

The Auctioneer and the Platform: What Is the Difference Between Live and Timed Auctions

This is where the format decides who holds the gavel, and it is the clearest answer to what is the difference between live and timed auctions. In a live auction, a human auctioneer directs bidding in real time, opens each lot, calls increments, protects the reserve, and closes with the strike of the hammer, which as Phillips states marks the acceptance of the highest bid and the conclusion of the contract of sale. The auctioneer's discretion, when to slow the room, when to give fair warning before closing, shapes the final price.

In a timed auction, no auctioneer is present. The lot opens at a set moment and closes at a fixed deadline, and bidders place bids at their own pace across the window, 7 to 14 days in LLB Auction's sales. The platform, not a person, enforces the close. So what is the difference between live and timed auctions once bidding starts? A person exercising judgement versus an algorithm enforcing a clock, and that single structural fact changes how a collector should bid. A live room rewards nerve and presence; a timed sale rewards a considered ceiling left early. Which format serves a given collector is weighed in how a timed online sale or a live saleroom serves a collector, and the mechanics of a timed close, including the anti-sniping soft close, are traced in how a timed online art auction runs from start to settlement.

The platform also fixes the cost of buying. The buyer's premium, the commission the winning bidder pays on top of the hammer price, was introduced at 10% by Christie's and Sotheby's in London in September 1975, and rates have climbed steeply since. Christie's has charged tiers of 25%, 20% and 12.5% by price band, and Phillips lists standard cumulative rates of 34.8%, 26.4% and 18%. LLB Auction holds a single, disclosed 20% buyer's premium with no cost added at checkout, which is one more axis of what is the difference between live and timed auctions once you compare houses rather than formats alone.

The Registrar and Shipping: Custody and the Insured Journey

The registrar is the person who owns custody and transit: the decision of how a work is stored, insured, packed and moved from the saleroom to the buyer. It is the least visible role and the one that most often determines whether a purchase becomes a problem. A registrar controls when title and physical possession actually transfer, the export paperwork on a cross-border sale, and the insurance that covers the work in transit.

What is the difference between live and timed auctions once a work is won? For custody and transit, none: the crate ships identically whether the gavel fell in a room or a clock ran out online. For a collector, the registrar's decisions surface as timing and cost. LLB Auction coordinates worldwide shipping, free on some sales, and handles post-sale logistics in house, so that a work handled with institutional care in the catalogue is not damaged in a poorly packed crate afterward. When a settlement stalls, invoicing, customs clearance or a shipping slot is usually the cause, and the registrar, not the specialist, is the person to ask. Naming that correctly saves a collector days of chasing the wrong department.

The Underbidder: How the Second Highest Bid Sets the Price

The underbidder is the second highest bidder, the last person to drop out before the hammer falls. Counterintuitively, this is the protagonist who sets the price. In an ascending auction, the winner does not pay their own maximum: they pay roughly one increment above the underbidder's final bid, the point at which the competition stopped. The winner's ceiling stays private; the underbidder's nerve is what the market actually observed.

This is why a single determined underbidder can lift a result far beyond an estimate, and why a lot with no genuine second bidder settles close to its reserve. The final price is a record of where the second strongest conviction in the room gave out, not of what the winner would have paid. Artsy makes the point plainly in its collector glossary: the underbidder is the last bidder to drop out, and that drop-out point becomes the hammer price. So what is the difference between live and timed auctions for the underbidder? Only the tempo. A second bidder still fixes the price in both formats; live, they test the winner over minutes, and in a timed sale they test the winner over days.

Understanding this reframes bidding strategy. A collector is not bidding against an artwork's worth in the abstract; they are bidding against one other person's resolve, and the discipline is to know their own ceiling before the underbidder tests it. That resolve, playing out fast in a room or slowly across a timed window, is the human core of what is the difference between live and timed auctions, long after the format itself is understood.

FAQ: What Is the Difference Between Live and Timed Auctions, and Who Decides What

What is the difference between live and timed auctions for a collector?

A live auction is run by an auctioneer who calls bids in real time and closes each lot with the hammer, while a timed auction has no auctioneer and closes at a fixed deadline, with bidding open across a window of 7 to 14 days. The practical part of what is the difference between live and timed auctions is control: a live sale rewards presence and nerve, a timed sale rewards a firm ceiling left early. LLB Auction runs timed online sales only.

Who sets the estimate on a lot?

The specialist sets the estimate, a low-to-high price range drawn from recent comparable sales. It is the house's expert judgement of where the work should land, not a guarantee, and it anchors the private reserve conversation with the consignor. An estimate that looks high or low is the specialist's call to defend.

What is the reserve price and who controls it?

The reserve price is the confidential minimum the seller will accept, agreed between the consignor and the house and usually set at or below the low estimate. The consignor controls it. If bidding does not reach the reserve, the lot is bought in and does not sell, whether the sale is live or timed.

Does the underbidder really set the hammer price?

Yes. In an ascending auction the winner pays roughly one increment above the underbidder's final bid, so the second highest bidder is the one who fixes the price. The winner's true maximum is never revealed; the hammer records where the second strongest conviction gave out.

What does the buyer's premium add to the hammer price?

The buyer's premium is a percentage charged on top of the hammer price. It began at 10% in 1975 and now runs far higher at the major houses, with Phillips listing cumulative rates of 34.8%, 26.4% and 18%. LLB Auction applies a flat 20% premium disclosed before you bid, with no further cost at checkout.

How LLB Auction Puts the Decisions Back in the Open

LLB Auction is built so a collector can name the decision-holder at every step and see the evidence behind each call. The house answers what is the difference between live and timed auctions decisively by running timed online sales only, on its own platform, with four auctions committed through 2026 into 2027 and lots typically between 800 and 50,000 euros.

Curated intake. The specialist function rejects roughly 40% of submissions, so the object, not the seller's reputation, clears the threshold. The rejection discipline is the product.

Documented condition. Every lot carries a three-page condition report and full provenance due diligence, so the record a buyer relies on is written before the sale, not improvised after it.

Transparent close. A single 20% buyer's premium and a 10% seller's commission are disclosed upfront, with worldwide shipping coordinated in house and no cost added at settlement. The Contemporary Art Spring 2026 sale closed 23 of 25 lots for roughly 39,480 euros in gross hammer, each result a matter of record.

Register with LLB Auction to receive the sale calendar and lot notifications, and to read the condition reports and provenance files before the next timed sale opens.

Conclusion

A sale is not an anonymous machine; it is a chain of five accountable people, and reading it well means naming the decision each one owns. The specialist owns the estimate and the catalogue, the consignor owns the reserve, the auctioneer or platform owns the close, the registrar owns custody, and the underbidder owns the final price. Seen this way, what is the difference between live and timed auctions is really a question about who holds the gavel, a human exercising judgement or a clock enforcing a deadline, and the answer shapes how a collector should bid. Trust the object and the documented judgement behind it, not the title on a business card, and every lot becomes legible.

Sources

Related reading

• How a timed online art auction runs from start to settlement
• The stages a lot passes through from catalogue to crate
• How a timed online sale or a live saleroom serves a collector
• What the soft close does to a sale, and why sniping fails

References

• Phillips Conditions of Sale, London : Phillips, 2026
• Christie's guide to buying at auction : Christie's, 2026
• Sotheby's guide to buying and selling at auction : Sotheby's, 2026
• The Invaluable auction glossary : Invaluable, 2026
• The 25 auction terms every art collector needs to know : Artsy, 2026
• Buyer's premium, history and current rates : Wikipedia, 2026
• Live online auctions versus timed online auctions : Dolby OptiView, 2026