Osborne 01 for only $5000.00 - new Scam???

From: Russ Blakeman <rhblake_at_bigfoot.com>
Date: Sat Jan 2 18:07:30 1999

Innfogra_at_aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 1/1/99 10:47:34 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> healyzh_at_aracnet.com writes:
>
> >
> > Out of curiosity, how to you find out how much a reserve bid is?
> >
>
> One of the list members reiterated a story about bidding up an item till he
> hit the reserve limit. Unfortunately you have to be willing to buy it to use
> this method. I also don't believe he got the item in the end.
>

On some I have, some I got to be the only bidder and never hit the reserve. The
seller is responsible for deciding if he or she wishes to relist the item if no
reserve is met or sell it. I did work out a deal with one seller that had listed
a reserve and after three listings only saw two bids ever. I asked if she'd take
a certain amount or trade and was able to get a set of like new Tektronix scope
leads on trade for a 400 mb hard drive. We both made out and since it didn't hit
reserve she didn't have to do a final value fee, to the best of my knowledge.

Many people use it to get people's curiousity up or make a proxy bid jump
though. If the start is $1 and a person feels that it's worth up to $25 for them
and posts a high $25 proxy, and the reserve is $20, then auto-magically the
first bid shows $20 and clears the reserve. I don't care for this at all myself.
I generally post what I want to see for an item, at minimum, and then see what
it goes to from there. If I get only one bid, fine. I've NEVER used a reserve
pricing myself but that's not to say that I'll never find a need for it someday.

I do like haggle's system of a running high bid auction or a single bid auction.
The single bid auction is more like saying you have an item for a certain amount
and the first one to make an offer of the minimum gets it. Sort of like posting
it here or on the newsgroups, only less negotiable.
Received on Sat Jan 02 1999 - 18:07:30 GMT