Subject:
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Re: When is "Not an Auction" really an auction?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.market.theory
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Date:
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Thu, 2 Dec 1999 16:16:43 GMT
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Viewed:
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297 times
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Derick Bulkley wrote:
> it's the worst kind of auction - sealed bid. This kind of sale heavily favors
> the seller by depriving bidders of virtually any information (except "you win"
> or "you lose") and the potential for abuse is enormous.
I'm not sure that it always favors the seller. I think it depends on the
item and the seller. The state of North Carolina runs a weekly sealed
bid auction for surplus property (actually they include some jobs also,
they occaisionally "sell" things like houses which need to be removed by
a certain date. These will specify that negative bids are allowed).
You can get some real good deals because there is little opportunity to
evaluate the equipment, so on many things people bid low (I got a van
for about 1/2 book value, I researched what trucks of it's age went for
from previous auctions, and found that they went for about 1/2 book
value, so I bid about 200 bucks over that). On the other hand some
equipment went for ridiculous prices (ex police cars for over book
value, computer equipment).
Note that eBay is a hybrid. It operates as an open auction (with the
convenience of proxy bidding) up to the last few seconds or so at which
point it turns into a sealed bid auction (with the added protection of
proxy bidding keeping your bid reasonable).
An open auction will generally get the "best" price for the seller.
While a sealed bid auction may occaisionally generate a higher bid, if
it generates them too often, the likelyhood of people reneging on bids
is likely to increase (this is where eBay's proxy really helps, it lops
off most of the extreme bids - except when two people put in extreme
bids, believing they are the only person doing so).
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: When is "Not an Auction" really an auction?
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| In lugnet.market.theory, Frank Filz writes: [snip] (...) eBay's proxy can be used by your alter-ego/shill too. Not that I have seen it but I have read some rather intersting How-To and HTHTY posts in newsgroups about the abuse of dual accounts and (...) (25 years ago, 3-Dec-99, to lugnet.market.theory)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | When is "Not an Auction" really an auction?
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| Be warned: serious ranting below. I'm awfully tired of notices posted to marketplace.buy-sell-trade, stating something like: "big Lego for sale.. ...this is NOT an auction... ...highest offer received after..." etc. This isn't an auction? It sure is (...) (25 years ago, 1-Dec-99, to lugnet.market.theory)
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