[pure-silver] Re: buying photo stuff on ebay
- From: "Edward C. Zimmermann" <edz@xxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 10:09:52 +0200
Quoting Georges Giralt <georges.giralt@xxxxxxx>:
> Shannon Stoney a écrit :
> >
> > I hope this is not too (shamefully) off topic. I know a lot of people on
> > this list shop on ebay for cameras, etc. Well, I just was doing the
> > same, and I have a question. I had a bid in on an item, and my highest
> > bid was $100, but for a whole day the price stayed at $66. I ended up
> > "winning" the auction, but at the very last minute , the bidding went up
> > to my highest bid, $100.
Snipes (last minute bids) typically follow patterns of "magic" levels. $100
is one such as bids such as $99.99 are more frequent to encounter than $100.
The logic is that $100 is too much and that even $99 is too much but one hopes
to get it much cheaper (recall it was at $66 USD) and, if not, see that the
buyer pays a bit too much. That's in a nutshell what appears to be the common
basic psychology of eBay competition. There is no functioning market and so
there are not real prices but a series of wild points and a lot of noise. There
are buyers who don't know or care about the price (but see the desire) and
there a many "professional" traders looking not just for "deals" but to try
to maintain price levels (since the market is so tiny one does not have to
be a Hunt brother to try to corner the market on a focus set of items). The
game, however, is even rigged and there are significant flaws and possibilities
for cheats. Since a bid can be withdrawn its also, unfortunately, common
(especially against Asian bidders who are known to bid early and high) for the
seller to (using another account) to bid themselves to push the price higher.
The goal is to push the price up as high as possible without outbidding the
high bidder.
This "magic" or psychological price levels are typically used to try to find
the right point. Even in "private listings" or the new hidden bidders display
the buyer is not protected from disclosure of their bidding since the seller has
complete and total access to the bidder name. Bidder history (including knowing
that they are from Asia) helps manipulate the auction. This is in violation
of eBay rules but even if a self-bidder is caught its the bidding account and
NOT the selling account that gets zapped. These bidding accounts are easy to
get and many of these sellers have many in reserve. Can eBay stop it? Given
that eBay earns money on the listing and a (not insignificant) percentage of
the final price its hardly in their interest to stop this kind of fraud as
long as the market seems to continue to play along. I would also like to
point out that while a buyer must pay for a win (or get an eBay strike which
can lead to a terminated account) a seller is NOT required by eBay to sell
(just to pay their fees should the auction complete). eBay's logic? The
seller is the one that pays the fees so the game needs to be tilted in their
favor (and, of course, the house) as long as there are (players) buyers to
fill the (gambling) tables...
--
Edward C. Zimmermann, NONMONOTONIC Lab
http://www.nonmonotonic.net
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