Is crack a common drug for ebay bidders?

[J]

Isn't then the Johnny come lately just sniping the sniper's bid? (not that I have a problem with it, it just doesn't seem to fix the problem of people bidding at the last minute)

Actually there are plenty of sealed bidding situations in the world. That is the model adopted by ebay. We have already heard of many examples where things already go for more than retail. Ebay to continue has to be beneficial to both buyers and sellers. If buyers are turned off by high prices they won't bother anymore and ebay will die. Remember that the buyer is the one person in the whole ebay world who is willing to pay the price for the item. What good would squeezing a few more dollars out of him do? The popularity of ebay by both buyers and sellers seems to suggest (not prove) that they are doing a decent job of balancing the needs of both.

-j

[Tim Douglass]

But e-bay is not a "real" auction in that sense. It is a silent auction with sealed bids. If you proxy bid your maximum you will never get sniped unless the sniper is willing to pay more than you are - exactly the same as if the auction continued until there were no more bids. The problem isn't with e-bay, it is with the poor understanding most people have of proxy bidding.

Tim Douglass

[Doug Miller]

No. Ebay is not a sealed bid auction. In a sealed bid auction, all bidding is completely secret until the end of the auction. Until the bidding closes, none of the bidders has *any* information about the number of competing bidders, their identities, or the amounts they have bid. After close of bidding, all this information is made public at once. Thus, each bidder has no reason to do anything other than to make a single bid at the lowest price he believes will be sufficient to win the auction, or the maximum he is willing to pay, whichever is less -- and no reason to make a last-minute bid, either.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.

[Tim Douglass]

Not entirely true. On a normal auction you can see who has bid, when they bid and what their maximum bid was for all but the current high bidder. The only information that is hidden is the maximum bid of the current high bidder. It is therefore not exactly like a sealed bid auction, but has many of the characteristics of a combined sealed bid and silent auction.

Tim Douglass

[J]

Yeah, that is what I meant to say.

-j