Weird...

[ffutures]

When I bid on Ebay I usually assume that someone will probably bid against me, and that any existing bidders will be working on the same basis. Accordingly I bid the maximum I want to spend.

So this evening I bid on something that had only one bid, and was still on its base price of 99p plus postage. Since it was worth about six pounds and postage was £2.50 I bid £2.50, on the basis that if the total was more than a fiver I might as well buy a new one.

So I checked at the end of the auction, and I'd won the item... for £1.04

In other words, they'd initially bid a quid, several days ago. Which given the value etc. seems just a little silly!

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I always bid a few pennies over the obvious stopping point. Just in case. For example, if bidding on an item at £1.00 and I'm willing to go to £10 I bid something like £10.01 or £10.51. It's surprising how often other bidders think of a round figure as their upper bid, and stop exactly on the nail.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

True - in fact I think my bid was £2.70, not £2.50, for exactly that reason. I forgot when I typed the entry.

[aisb23.livejournal.com]

Of course the logical way to look at it is that whoever placed the initial bid thought the item was only worth £1 plus postage.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You'd have to be pretty bloody stupid, given it's a piece of lab glassware that sells for a minumum of £6 quid, but hey, that's not my problem...

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

You're assuming you want to "win" every auction you bid on. There's a thriving market of people who low-bid, get the item, and then resell it to people like you who think the "new" price has meaning for used items.

Everyone is happy!

A bigger problem is having sock puppets bid items up.

[armb.livejournal.com]

If it's a piece of glassware you don't actually need right now, and there's a fair chance that several more will come up on eBay before you do need one, one of which might not have anyone else bidding on it, it's still a reasonable strategy.