Snipes Killing eBay?
I'm having a hard time understanding most of the arguments being made here. For sellers, why not just protect yourself with a decent reserve? Then it's cost you little and now you can either try again or find another venue for your sale. If catalog auctions are so great, then use those even if you have to do some grouping. But now there are auctions that accept individual lots worth $100 or so. Or start doing shows. Or bring your stuff to a show and sell to a dealer. As for the argument that sniping eliminates the psychology that drives auction prices, can't you have two buyers who REALLY have to have something and leave enormous snipes that drive the final way beyond the third bid. I've seen this happen a lot in checking bidding histories on eBay. So gosh, the poor eBay sellers aren't getting what they want for their merchandise? Is it possible that they paid too much? Or that the economy sucks right now and very little moves like it used to? Or that they're pulling their stuff too early and losing some good last-minute bids? Nah, can't be those, it must be the sniping that's killing them. This just strikes me as the online equivalent of the show dealers who won't look at their customers, overprice horribly, don't know how to buy, won't work hard enough to get new stuff, then complain about what lousy shows they're having.
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