Ebay Altair

From: Carlos Murillo <cem14_at_cornell.edu>
Date: Wed May 10 12:50:11 2000

At 08:59 AM 5/10/00 -0700, you wrote:
>> > Of course I will be attacked for saying all this, but then addicts do get
>> > bolshie when confronted with the reality of the situation. :)
>>
>> Anything ANYONE does can be called sick to others who have no interest nor
>> understanding. Look at that group of crazy people who collect old computers
>> ... must be a bunch of sickos :).
>
>The example I had in my head when I wrote that was me. It's a lot
>different when you can look critically at yourself and realize there's a
>problem.
>
>How many others have done so?

Hi, my name is Carlos and I am an eBayer :-) .

Of course, I've bought things that I probably shouldn't have
bought (I took risks). On the other hand, in teeny isolated Ithaca there
are no scrapyards and there is only one ham meeting a year (there is
another one close by, so that makes two hamfests a year).
My only source of free stuff is the ocassional find at the
dumpster in the EE department. And I am not going to cut short
what little family time I have on weekends in order to drive long
distances to more plentiful lands.

Tim: sniping actually works. You just have to set your limit
beforehand. If the bids get past that limit, then don't snipe.
Bidding early does help bring the price up because others have
more time to convince themselves that they want the same thing.
Someone pointed out that this has more or less the effect of making the
auction mechanism more like a sealed bid auction, since snipers
often don't have the time to submit a second bid.

>From an economic point of view, open bid auctions are biased and
are not a good indicator of proper market value because the price
is not allowed to go down. In a rational market, repeated interaction,
equal visibility and access, and the fact that the price _is_ allowed to go
down as well as up is what makes it possible to find the market equilibrium.
Thus, not even the average price of many eBay auctions is a good
indicator of market value, because all samples are biased. Somebody
already pointed out that eBay is good for sellers. Of course it is
good; the mechanism is biased in their favor.

Still, for reasons of local scarcity, I am glad that eBay exists.
Received on Wed May 10 2000 - 12:50:11 BST