Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
It has always seemed to me that if a consignor only wants to sell at a certain minimum price, the simplest and most direct way to achieve that is to start the bidding there. But nobody ever seems to want to do that.
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Partly auction psychology. People feel a sense of ownership on items they bid on, so you want a lot of bidders. The other part is end of auction. If you have a $12000 item where you start the bidding at $10,000 you shut a lot of people out of extended bidding. If you start it at $25 with a $10,000 reserve you'll have a lot more eligible bidders (all this is based on only previous item bidders being eligible in extended bidding) Of course you could always start it at $25 with no reserve and trust the process, but who would do that?
