Reserve Price Auctions

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Posted By: Scott Forrest

For many ebayers, this whole auction thing is a game - if it isn't fun, they don't play. Thus, $100 minimum bid is interesting to a dealer who thinks he can re-sell the item for 20% more, but not necessarily interesting to all others.

Another scenario: I once had a BIN on an item that was about 50% higher than what I thought it was worth - it was sort of seller's remorse. Someone bought it. I was happy. However, if I had started the auction off at $9.99, it might have only sold for 1/4 what the BIN was - the reason being that if only two bidders are interested, and the less-interested bidder isn't REAL interested, the high bidder gets it cheap. Thus, reserves and high opening bids for rare, low-interest items.

Regarding bid retractions - I have had bidders do that to me. I then added them to my blocked bidders list. One of them was very pissed because he wanted the item, and claimed it was an accidental bid. So I un-blocked him and he did it again to another one of my items (bid, then retracted).

There are a lot of odd ducks playing the ebay game - figuring out what makes them tick so that you can get good prices on your sales can be tricky at times.