P3D Re: Reserve price auctions

[erker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Greg Erker)]

  As a more-seller-than-buyer on ebay let
me defend reserve auctions.

  They only give you a limited number of
characters to describe your item. If your
title says "Stereo Realist f3.5 camera in
Ex cond" many won't look at it when
you start it at $99.99. But if you
put a reserve on it and set the starting
price at $10 lots of people will look
at it.

  Then they can read your full blurb
that describes that it comes with a case,
has double exposure prevention, DOF scale
and was owned by Dr.T at one time and
see your photo of it. A lot of people will
bid at under your reserve price but some will
bid over.

  I've been at real live auctions where
no one would bid at a starting price of
$10 but after the price went down to $1
bidding started and it ended up above
the $10 mark. So high starting prices
can hurt you in ebay auctions since you
can't lower the price like the auctioneer
did in the above example.

  As a buyer, just bid the max you are
willing to pay then let the proxy bidding
take care of it. If your bid doesn't meet
reserve then don't worry it was more expensive
than you wanted to pay. If you end up
high bidder but below reserve some sellers
will bargain when they realize their reserve
price was too high.

IMO - Greg E.



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