In a message dated 10/27/05 1:49:56 PM, classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org writes:
> Sniping does indeed limit maximum selling price in many cases..
>
> In the case of sniping, the potential buyer enters the maxiumum price
> they are willing to bid, then sits back and lets the electronics take
> over.
> Once the dust has settled and the item is sold to the highest bidder, a
> quick query to the loser is often (almost always!) that they in fact
> would have paid more, especially now that they have lost that auction.
> Some dispassionate bidders may say no, but most would have squeezed the
> piggie bank a little harder to take the prize. Conventional auctions
> use this factor to drive the prics ever upward but eBay and other
> "timed" inline auctions eliminate the upward spiral that emotion could
> play by stopping all bidding at the end of that proscribed time. Hence
> the logical (and legitimate) tool called sniping was created....
>
> Some of us use a sniping tool precisely because of that, i.e. it
> prevents us from being stupid and impulsively bidding higher than we
> really should!
>
> Dale Brown
> Greensboro, NC USA
>
>
Exactly right. I recently watched an auction in New Zealand drift upwards beyond where I am sure it would have ended in the US because their auction software extended the close time for another two minutes every time a bid wa s entered.
Since I spend more time as a buyer than a seller, I'm the last guy who'd wan t to see higher auction prices, but I have to admit that New Zealand auction site's method seems to make more sense. Or at least it more closely resemb les a 'traditional' auction, in that the event does not end at some arbitrary time... it ends after the warning "going once, going twice, sold!" when ever yone has had a moment for second thoughts and no one wants to bid any more.
Bob Hovey
Columbus, GA