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Re: [OM] Vivitar Series 1 Solid Cat Lens

Subject: Re: [OM] Vivitar Series 1 Solid Cat Lens
From: Garth Wood <garth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 07:02:01 -0600
At 10:27 PM 5/27/98 -0700, Winsor Crosby wrote:

[BIG snip]

>You lost me. You said minimum bid was $10, not maximum bid. $175 exceeds
>the $10 minimum. So why does the bid only rise to $35? W.C.

Sorry.  There's a quirk in the way bidding works.  You can bid more than $10.00 
(or whatever), but the increment is ONLY $10.00, *provided* no-one's entered a 
greater amount to bid.  In other words, the software of eBay keeps everybody's 
maximum a secret to everybody else, to keep people from doing the "You bid 
$100.00?  Well, I'll bid $100.01!" trick.  Then it simply bids on your behalf.  
If nobody starts off by bidding higher than the (to them secret) reserve, the 
eBay software will simply bid your increment, in this case, $10.00.

[snip]

>You lost me. On the initial bid you said it could only go up $10 no matter
>what was bid, but now you say that it can go above the $10 limit, but only
>if it goes over the reserve, but it cannot go to what was bid? Huh?

No.  The second bid only went up by $10.00 because it failed to meet the 
reserve.  If the secondbid had been $205.00, it would have immediately been 
pegged at $200.00 (because that was the reserve), and  bidder number two would 
have been told (a) reserve had been met, and (b) they were the high bidder.  
The reason no bid goes to your secret ceiling right away is to prevent the 
"outbid by 1 cent" behaviour -- in other words, it forces everyone to consider 
what their *true* "maximum bid" would be for any item, rather than simply 
saying to themselves "I'm always willing to bid 1 cent more than someone else."

[snip]

>...but why don't the bidding algorithms of EBay bid
>up the first bidders bid to $170?

Because bidder number one in my previous example only bid $25.00 (i.e., the 
minimum bid), and no more.  In other words, bidder #1 was also setting a 
*ceiling* of $25.00 for her/his bid.  The last thing you'd want to happen is 
have software bid for you without your "permission."  That's why your maximum 
bid, whatever it is, is only reached if someone else comes along to try and 
outbid you.

Really, all this is explained (better than I can do, obviously) on eBay itself. 
 Try the URL:

   http://pages.ebay.com/aw/nut-start1.html

for a start.  Then my recommendation is to watch the progress of an auction of 
one particular item (try to pick one with some activity on it, a so-called 
"hot" item).  Hey, if *I* can understand it, *anybody* can.  And watching 
auctions are always free.  I watched for several weeks before entering my first 
auction, partly to make sure I understood the system and partly to get a "feel" 
for the prices of used items in the global marketplace.  8^>

Garth


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