Non-Ebay Auction Strategy

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Posted By: Al Simeone

Barry,
Maybe part of this is what you said you re sell alot of the lots you bid on. There for your topper or ceiling bids may not be that high to start with. Your a business man and being a business man you know how far you are willing to go. I have studied this problem for years about bids and how to bid. Here is a good topic for this board to ponder. With the onset of computers being now a big part of the auction industry would you say that there is a possiblity that each auction house might have software that profiles your bidding history ? And the bidding history of every client? I.E. How you bid ,when you bid, early ,late,right at the end,never at the end, what you bid on Cards,pins,books,equipment etc. Takes all this information and compiles a list of maybe who is going to bid and how likely that item is going to hit what they think it will? Lets say once the bid is placed on that item the computer generates a profile on you to see if you are likely a collector,dealer,re seller,and how likely you would be willing to go? Also for arguement sake do you think that an auction house looks at lets say an item that doesnt have any bids on it but but knows thru its software that that item has been looked at lets say 100 times but still has no bids due to peoples "bidding Strateges" do you think that there might be a possiblity that the may just place a bid based on the fact that THEY can see the" traffic pattern" on the item where you cant. For the sake of arguement do you think that might just happen. Also do you think that maybe there is a possiblity that some of these auction houses share information on you much the same way casinos might share info on you if you were a prospective "whale" I.E. large bidder with money!At least ebay has a counter at the bottom to tell you how many people at least looked at the auction. A seller has the right to at least leave it on or turn it off. A great case in point is ebay itself. There computers are so powerful they know exactly what everyone bids on what they bid on if they sell more ,buy more. etc.etc. So my question is if you answered yes to any of the above hypothetical questions I asked then do you think there is a possiblity the industry needs a serious looking into? Sometimes you really have to think outside the box to draw the right conclusion.