The Japanese yahoo auctions have had the dual counter information available to the seller for quite awhile. My experience is that there is often little carry over from a large contingent of people who have bookmarked, to some kind of "feeding frenzy" at the end. Of course, it only takes two to "tango". The number of people bookmarking starts to rapidly drop off as the price goes up, so starting the auctions at a low price is likely advantageous as is advised. Also, at the yahoo auction the seller has the option, for a few pennies more, to have the auction extended ten minutes if a bid is placed within the last five(?) minutes. Two bidders get into it and the thing can go on and on. A seller can find his item going for far above what it would have sold for had the auction ended at the initial scheduled time. My heart went out to the bidders as I watched a not so nice legnano frame I had up, go from $300 to $1000 within an extended time half hour. Like from a old Dirty Harry movie, I couldn't believe what was happening while it was happening.
Dennis Young Hotaka, Japan, where I saw both the *&^n monkees and a wild Japanese serow mountain goat (Nemorhaedus crispus) during yesterday's beautiful weather ride.
> I think some of you are mis-reading the origianl post. Ebay has always had
> counters that the seller could add to his auction to see how many people have
> just looked at it (the auction).
>
> When selling on eBay now though, there is a new feature for the seller that
> shows how many people have bookmarked the auction and added the auction to
> their "watch list". This feature shows up on the sellers "My eBay" page under
> the individual auctions. I recently sold an old Schwinn bike and had 29 people
> watching the auction. There were something like 500 people that had simply
> looked at the auction. I think this new feature just came out very recently.
>
> cheers,
> Rod Kronenberg
> Fort Collins, CO