[78-L] Auctions vs. "Make offer"

[Michael Biel]

From: "Steven C. Barr" <stevenc at interlinks.net>
> Well, here you are confusing the mass-stupidity of eWotsit with
> an "auction!"

It's the other way around.  Taylor has thoroughly explained why most
record mail "auctions" are actually "make offer sales" while your farm
auctions AND ebay, and to a small extent Kurt's, are true auctions.  The
only TRUE auctions are where the winning amount is a known increment
above the second highest bid, and that in turn had been established by a
series of increases of known increments.  Making a single blind bid and
having to pay that amount without there having been incremental
increases up to that amount is NOT an auction.  Much, much thanks to
Taylor for pinning this distinction down.  

> Trying to win anything on the former means that you are battling 
> "auto-snipe" programs, digitally set up to place the high bid
> about twelve microseconds before the deadline; the problem here
> (for bidders) is that these programs assume their owner's
> computer clock is perfectly accurate (VERY rare!)!

As has been explained to you before when you said the same thing, these
are not programs in your computer but are services provided by web sites
and rely on the web site's clock, not the user's computer clock. 

> OTOH, "auction lists" (for the most part) allow bidders to make ONE
> bid (a very few will tell buyers if they are high-bid and allow them
> another shot...?!)...with the hopes that one is the high, winning
> bid on the record in question! 

But except for auctions like Kurt's, usually you are stuck with that bid
even if nobody else bid and you could have gotten it for the minimum.

> I used to submit what I called "shotgun bids"...bids I knew
> were well below the value (and thus the probable high bid)
> of the disc...but maybe 5% of the time nobody else bid,
> so I bought the record for cheap!

You can do that on ebay as well.  You can set your snipe to bid at the
last moment at the minimum bid or a few cents above the minimum
increment (26 cents, 51 cents, $1.01) and get it for the minimum bid if
you are the only bidder, or just above the minimum if there was just one
bidder and they stuck at the minimum bid.  I won a whole bunch of print
stuff for 99 cents in the past few days this way.

> This assumes that some digitally-aware (otherwise UNaware?!)
> competitor isn't lurking in the digital "hinterlands" with
> his/her/its Autosnipe v9.11 ready to enter "your bid + minimum
> increase" nine microseconds before the end of this sale!

Once again, it doesn't work that way.  The other sniper does not know
what your top bid is.  If they snipe your bid with the minimum increase,
your original bid might have been higher, so would automatically be
raised the minimum increase above the other guy's snipe.  If this is
happening in the final ten seconds, there are only so many times a
program can re-snipe.  So sniper usually also put in high bids with the
hope that the other bidders and snipers did not also put in very high
proxy bids.  

> Call me . . . "out of touch with life in the 21st century"
> ...but my limited experience with eWotsit has been extremely
> discouraging!

It is OBVIOUS that you have limited experience with ebay because you
keep on bringing up things that show that you do not really know how
ebay works.  

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com 




-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [78-L] Auctions vs. "Make offer"
From: "Steven C. Barr" <stevenc at interlinks.net>
>> Here I beg to differ! I grew up in central Illinois, and during
>> the early 70's I attended a "farm auction" virtually every
>> week-end. These are/were "real auctions," and the winning high
>> bidder paid whatever his winning bid was. At one in particular,
>> there was a 1938 State Farm road atlas which I really wanted...
>> so when it came up I bid ten bucks right off the top! Nobody
>> wanted to beat that (or they figured there was no point in
>> trying to out-bid me?!)...so I bought it for my $10!
>> ...stevenc

From: "Taylor Bowie" <bowiebks at isomedia.com>
> Right, Steve, but the difference there was that you the bidder
> got to set your own terms while also being privy to what the
> other bidders were doing. So if you wanted to bid $20 when the
> last bid was $5 to shut it down and scare off other bidders,
> you could do that. Not the same as a paper "auction/make offer\
> sale" where you have no idea what the other bidders are doing.
> In the latter case you might bid $20 in hopes of winning, but
> you have no idea if the other bid is $25, $15, or a buck.