EBaying; howling after an auction

From: CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com <(CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com)>
Date: Sun Oct 17 19:37:57 1999

>I've seen this, too. On one particular item that I wanted,
>in viewing the "View Sellers Other Auctions", I noticed that
>he had a number of them to sell. Spread out over a few days.
>I would bid on one and someone would outbid me. I'd bid on
>another and someone would outbid me. I finally just said forget
>it, this is getting ridiculous. :-)

Certainly, E-bay does provides tools for many "commodity" type items
to compare one sale with past ones, so you know what a reasonable bid
is. There are evidently folks who don't know how to use this, and
it doesn't really bother me, I just feel kind-of-sorry for them.

Other E-bay phenomena:

1. Items (like HP C3010 2 Gbyte SCSI drives) that have been
flooding the surplus market. These are available from liquidators
like www.hitechcafe.com and www.compgeeks.com for $30-$35-$40, but
I've seen them bid up into the $50-$60 range on E-bay very regularly.
Same thing often happens for surplus PC-clone mainboards.

2. What really amazes me is when a seller makes a reserve price auction,
very plainly states the reserve price in the item description, and
there are literally dozens of bids made *below* the stated reserve
price. What the ???. Either the bidders think this is entirely a
"bidding game", where the objective is to outbid the other guy with
no real intention to buy, or they don't read the description at all, or they
haven't a clue period.

Tim.
Received on Sun Oct 17 1999 - 19:37:57 BST