a little venting- shutting Ebay auctions down

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Posted By: Cobby33

As I've ranted on here before, the "extended bidding" "feature" the auction houses use, is the biggest pain in the a** ever and seeks only to make the auction houses and consignors more money. If you don't have the time to sit in front of your computer and make last-second bids, just put your high bid in and be done with it already, alas, this greedy play doesn't allow you to do that.

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Posted By: Frank Evanov

EBAY is a 2 way street. As a seller, if someone wants to pay stupid money to end an auction, I will end the auction. As a buyer, I hate when that happens, but it's all part of the game.

Frank

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Posted By: barrysloate

Cobby mentioned that extended bidding is a pain because it ultimately just makes the consignor more money. As an auctioneer myself, nothing is more important to me than making my consignors more money. If someone trusts me to sell their cards, I have to take that responsibility very seriously. The way I see it, bidders are in complete control of their own destinies. Consignors on the other hand do not have any control over their lots and are at the mercy of the auction system. So any system an auction house can set into motion that helps consignors is the lifeblood of the process. Obviously, ebay, catalog auctions, and live auctions each have their own good and bad points. But in the end the lot goes to the highest bidder. That would happen on ebay every time too if sellers didn't get so nervous and impatient. I am actually amazed by how many bids certain lots get the first couple of days. In theory, every ebay lot should be at zero with a minute to go. You don't need to qualify and there is no advantage to bidding early, with the one exception that a lack of bidding spooks inexperienced sellers. That is the strange idiosyncracy of ebay. It doesn't pay to bid early, yet a seller starts freaking out when he sees no early bids. Some fine tuning is necessary there.

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Posted By: Cobby33

Hi Barry-
Good point about the early bidding on eBay. I've noticed over the past few months that bids on my items rise exponentially the last few minutes and I have increasingly more watchers.
Regarding my comment about the extended bidding, I guess I'm just bitter because I always buy and never consign with the auction houses. I suppose I'd keep my mouth shut if I were a consignor

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Posted By: barrysloate

Auction houses are sellers and bidders are buyers. Buyers and sellers have different objectives. I may sympathize with the frustration of bidders, but auction houses work for consignors.