If necessary do your homework on the pieces for which you intend to bid, but please don't carry your Charlton or Millers around the viewing, it marks you as an amateur. Check your price guides, antiques guides, old catalogues if you become a regular, and make the final decision on your bidding limits. Two determined collectors after one piece can, and regularly do, make a nonsense of published price guides. I have heard time after time that private buyers do not like bidding against dealers. I assure you that dealers fear a serious collector with a passion.
Dealers have to earn a living, make a profit, stay in business.
No dealer will ever bid to what is know as 'top book' price. Now to auction day, hammer time, bid time. Be at the auction room prior to your first lot. It sounds so obvious, but we have all missed lots by being late, getting delayed, or simply miscalculating. Most auctioneers will operate at about 120 lots to the hour.