I think the etiquette should be the same as at a physical auction. You wouldn't bid against your mother, your next door neighbor, or your best friend at a local antique auction for an item they had been searching for for 20 years, unless, of course you had also. It would be a matter of discussing which person "really" wanted it, and the other refraining. If two good friends both "had to have" the item, they might agree to "let the best man win" and no hard feelings. The only difference here is that with 450 members, its hard to know all the others or communicate with them every time. When there were fewer of us bidding on ebay, some of us tried to check with a list of others before bidding, but this gradually became impractical. Now, if I recognize another member as high bidder, and happen to know that this is the kind of item he really likes, or if he has mentioned he is in need of the specific item, I'll usually refrain if it is something I don't need immediately for a specific project. I agree the operation of a free marketplace has a lot of efficiency, as long as we don't elevate it to some sort of religious dogma to the exclusion of personal courtesy. Seems to me even the guys on the list who make a living from this are frequently willing to help out list members rather than always trying to make every possible penny. Mike himself is certainly one of the "good guys" in this respect, which is one reason I enjoy doing business with him.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
-----Original Message----- From: Bicycle Classics inc [mailto:bikevint@tiac.net] Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 12:34 AM To: OROBOYZ@aol.com; sgpnet@earthlink.net; classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: Re: [CR]Bidding Protocol on Ebay?
Hi Fellow CR folks,
I think there is a glitch in the whole "refrain from bidding on ebay if its against a CR member" idea.
If as courtesy we refrain from bidding against one another, there is to some extent an implication that finding an item first on ebay puts that particular person first in line. It rewards frequent and detailed searching of ebay on a more regular basis than some would wish. It kind of makes it like the opening moments of a swap meet which, to some, might be rather stressfull.
The idea of ebay is that bidders simply pay money for an item. CR list members who find it valuable to provide the non-bidding courtesy, may then be opt to spend more time searching for items than they otherwise would, thereby imposing a time cost onto ebay purchasing as well.
This cost is hard to quantify - my gut feeling is let the market do its thing. This is especially true because many folks on this list are also sellers on ebay and then those folks get hurt by a group strategy of non-competitive bidding.
While this is not always the case of course, in the extreme assume that all buyers and sellers on ebay were CR group members that followed this tact. It could be shown that if all members were participants at one time or another on ebay, that everyone would be made worse off by the hold-off-on-bidding strategy. That is because fundemental trades of bike parts to the highest bidder do not occur that otherwise could. Folks who are normally not "big" spenders of items would be harmed on the sale side when it was their turn to sell.
It must also be remembered that by refraining from bidding, the CR member may not get the item at the end of the auction anyway - the kind CR members actions may only depress the price for some non-CR person to snipe at the end.
Finally, if the hold-off-on-bidding strategy is voluntary, there is a benefit conveyed by the non-bidders to the bidder group which may not ever be recipricated.
The upshot is that I think that in this case let the market do its thing and allocate stuff as it does. Off ebay trades on the CR group can be highly beneficial to everyone involved as long as folks trading with one another have a good feel of what the item would bring in the open market (i.e such as if it were auctioned on ebay).
As an aside, this begs for a venue for CR folks to list items they wish to trade away and items they wish to trade for. CR folks could look at the list and trade with one another in a very efficient way. Maybe there is a way to generate such a page similar to the Classified page on the CR site. But - we need to find a way to do it that is easy on Dale!
Just some thoughts, Mike Kone
At 08:34 PM 6/12/01 EDT, OROBOYZ@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 6/12/2001 7:16:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>sgpnet@earthlink.net writes:
>
><< If a CR member places a bid at (or near) the beginning of an
> auction, does that entitle him or her to have sole rights to the object?
>>
>
> I guess if you were bidding and I recognized you and if I felt I wanted
you
>to have it more than me.... but that has to do with our relationship, not
the
>CR. Not long ago I had some folks kindly defer bidding on an eBay item to
my
>benefit, which I considered an act of consideration and kindness, but they
>certainly were not obligated to do that!!
>
>But, although it is nice to know which bidders are CRers and then have that
>information to base your decision on, in general, I think we have agreed
that
>if you want it you should go ahead and bid on it!
>
>Is that right? Do all of us more or less agree here?
>
>Dale Brown
>Greensboro, North Carolina