Thread: General auction/Ebay question

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

What really amuses me is the sellers who post,"Serious bidders only" as if they could somehow enforce that.

I try not to smile when I bid on those. If I catch myself smiling, I log out, sign back in and try to make it through with a straight face.

Originally Posted by Pyment

I try not to smile when I bid on those. If I catch myself smiling, I log out, sign back in and try to make it through with a straight face.

LOL. Luckily your post didn't require serious posters only, otherwise I would have had to log back on, reread your post and try to respond without laughing while typing

Well after hearing why sellers set reserves I'm curious enough about it that I'm going to try an experiment and utilize a reserve on some current and upcoming Ebay listings. I'm curious to see how such a practice would impact a listing vs. a listing that would have a minimum bid.

Chris L

Chris one thing I do know is that a high reserve that people can see will kill an auction!

That makes sense to me. We all want a deal. That's the truth!

Chris L

Chris send email to seller and ask about reserve most of them will let you know what is it. some actually wright at the end of the listing how much reserve is.

There are two issues with ebay:
1. As far as I know, If I put in a max of $50, and the reserve is $40, but someone else only goes up to $10, I won't hit the reserve ever will I cus autobid would only put me at $10.50. I've never been in a situation where I could afford the reserve so I dunno if ebay's software accounts for this.
2. In a live auction, the auction ends x seconds after the last bid, not at a certain time. So if I REALLY wanted something, and I said $50, then someone said $51, and I was like of course I can manage $52! I would have an opportunity to do that. So yes I see why it helps with gambling, but if two people put in max's a dollar apart (or even a penny- bidding $20.01 instead of $20), its unfair. My .02.

I've actually seen an auction site that does this. It extends the auction a minute after each bid, up to an hour, to take care of snipers.

One advantage to the hidden reserve process may be this.
Let's say I'm a seller and I have an item up for auction. I'm not really sure of its value, but I'm positive it's not worth $5000. So I set that as my hidden reserve price. The auction runs out and I notice four or five bidders hovering around the $1500 point. Now that I have a good idea of the market value, I can relist the item with a visible reserve of say $1450 and possibly get an above market price for the item. Just a thought.

Edit: This just occured to me. After the first auction times out, I as the seller have the opportunity to research the top few bidders. Are three of the four bidding/buying similar items like crazy? Are they buying them and then relisting them at higher prices? Are the refurbishing them first? Is one or more of the buyers (based on his or her bids on similar items) kinda clueless about the item I'm selling? There may be other reasons that I'm missing here.

Originally Posted by Tolduonce

One advantage to the hidden reserve process may be this.
Let's say I'm a seller and I have an item up for auction. I'm not really sure of its value, but I'm positive it's not worth $5000. So I set that as my hidden reserve price. The auction runs out and I notice four or five bidders hovering around the $1500 point. Now that I have a good idea of the market value, I can relist the item with a visible reserve of say $1450 and possibly get an above market price for the item. Just a thought.

This is a good point. Ebay also allows for "second chance" where the seller has the option to sell the item below reserve to the highest bidder as a private buy it now for the high bid price after the auction ends.