Proxibid continues to enhance the site’s bidder application window, enabling online customers to feel onsite during an auction–or onsite at several auctions all at once. (Click on photos above and below to see snapshots of the new app.)

The new Proxibid bidder window, about 1 1/2 times larger than the previous version, is a godsend to multitaskers frequenting several live or timed coin auctions simultaneously. Its main features are:

• Name of auction with date and time.
• Large photo in viewfinder with lot number and title of coin.
• A bidder arrow with “Once, Twice, Sold.
• A large button on current bid of coin, with red fill indicating a losing bid and green a winning one.
• A smaller box below that indicating the exact price of bid.
• A message center capturing bidder actions and notes, especially as they pertain to one’s lots.
• A space to send messages to the auctioneer, allowing interactivity.
• Four tabs titled “Catalog,” “MyLots,” “Audio/Video” and “Preferences.”

The tabs are the showcase of the new bidder application window. (Expand pictures for views.)

MyLots gives a running account of one’s maximum and winning/losing bids, again indicated with green and red fonts. If you enter a live auction after it has begun, you’ll get to see how your lots did without returning to the Website and scrolling down pages to find those lots.

Audio/Video is really nothing more than a button that launches streaming sound or video. But it does so by opening another window on your computer instead of funneling the streams through the very ample space on the bidder window.

Preferences again only has one function, to turn on or off the clicking and musical sounds of an auction.

Proxiblog suggests two more upgrades to the bidder app:

1. Allowing Audio/Video to stream through the window rather than opening up another browser window. The problem with this is many users have Windows Explorer as their default, and Proxibid just doesn’t run well on Explorer. Example: After an auction session times out, you cannot return to the auction by typing your user name and password. You have to close out the entire window and start over from scratch. (Curious that Proxibid doesn’t encounter the same types of issues on Mozilla Firefox, the best browser for coin auctions, by the way.)
2. Programming streaming audio and video through the “on/off” button on the Preferences tab. This would allow the user working several auctions at once to view her or his immediately upcoming lots while shutting off Audio/Video in other lagging auctions so as to hear the auctioneer nearest to a specific maximum bid or desired item. Right now you can do that only if you silence audio on other open browsers, necessitating several computer actions to restore.

All in all, however, Proxibid is to be praised for continuing to enhance and upgrade its technology, part of the reason its auction fees are reasonable because it continues to invest in software that attracts more coin buyers.

Proxiblog is an independent entity with no connection to the auction portal Proxibid. Our intent is to uphold basic numismatic standards as established by the American Numismatic Association and the National Auctioneer Association and to ensure a pleasurable bidding experience not only on Proxibid but also on similar portals such as iCollector and AuctionZip.