In the fixed price or private sale the market value is determined by the fixed price or seller. Sellers cannot be trusted.
(Axiom #1)
In the auction setting the market value or winning bid is determined by the idiot who bid a few dollars less than the winner.
(Axiom #2)
I would suggest that the "deal" is a competition between the buyer and the seller
, and not a competition between buyers.
In the first "fixed price" scenario, the outcome can be modified by what is commonly known as dickering. Some sellers will dicker, some buyers will dicker, but not all of either group are willing to dicker. Hence the need arises for the auction scenario to accommodate a deal between at least one non-dickering participant.
In the second "auction" scenario, the dickering seller and the non-dickering seller are all eliminated from the equation. The dickering buyer cannot dicker with a non-dickering seller. Therefore buyers, both dickering and non-dickering, rely on the infinite wisdom of the previous idiot whose bid they raised, to reassure themselves that if they are not paying too much, because someone else, the prior bidder, was more than willing to pay almost as much and he must know more than seller. This of course can lead to unjustified inflation of sales prices.
I see the so-called bidding war as the validation of market value independent of the evil seller, who relinquishes all control of the process in this format, whether he is willing to dicker or not.
This argument does not invalidate any impact of supply and demand on the ultimate sales price.
So that's pretty much the answer in a nutshell. If you have any questions, don't ask.
