Is this guy running me up?

[stuntpilot]

Its worth whatever the market will bear. The bigger and more important question is, why would anyone want such an UGLY cooler!! I saw that ad hour after it was listed and that's what I thought. I never thought it would be in a bidding war for a non-embossed generic odd looking cooler.

My thoughts exactly!

We have a shop in a building with 6 other tenents, two of those tenents are large E-bay sellers. One of them does over 2 million a year in sales thru E-Bay. 99 percent of his auctions are Buy it now auctions but every once in awhile he starts one at .99, he says 50 percent of the time those go for more than the buy it now listings. Bidding wars are crazy.

[MoonDawg]

     
      This guy only sells parts and tools on E bay. When he first listed this cooler, he probably recieved a ton of requests for a buy it now price and he didn't have a number.

       His research would dig up very few of these sold or valued, and the condition of his was above average...... so he got excited.

      But after playing this little game at least he knows what his cooler is really worth,
3 bids came in at around $1000.

            Might not be a bad idea to contact him before he re-lists it.

[BONOVOX]

I was somewhat interested in the item, and told memorylane so, but I was sceptical of those 0 bids, and although it just passed my limit, I didnt want to bid against MemoryLane, AND I didnt feel right about how the bidding was going so I never even placed a bid.

Classic example I think of Ebay shill bids.

[SIGNGUY]

I'm not 100% sure how the eBay fee structure works.. but are people using "shill" bidding as a way to get out of putting a reserve on something?
I know they charge 25.00 to put a reserve on an auction.. I think.. or maybe it's percentage thing?

so maybe this guy was trying to cheat the system, put it out there, put no reserve but he knew he'd not take less than $XXXX for it.. so he bid it up to that amount to "Skirt" the Fee structure?

not condoning, just trying to understand.

basically it comes down to this...if a collectable and somewhat valuable item comes on on eBay and you see the starting bid at 5.00, don't expect that you're going to get a deal.. Shill bidding, reserves, what ever you want to call it.. sellers will get the most they can out of their item typically.

now on the other hand.. I have 4-5 items listed on ebay,, yes they are collectable.. but I started the bidding at 5.00 and no reserve... some of the trays book for 200-400 dollars but I'm going to let the bidders decide what they can or want to pay... I may get 10.00 for them or several hundred.. we'll see.. and that is what is should be like..

Stepping down off the soapbox ..  

[MaineT]

The reality is, when we sell something we all want the most someone will pay. If I dump in $200 for you auction and walk away and its worth $400 and since it is a perpetual auction, not a single event, the other players are on vacation or whatever, so I win it for $5. By putting in a bid, or offer of $200 to buy your tray, it takes someone else to maximize and realize that offer. If you offered $200 at a real auction, that would be the high bid, ebay uses proxy bidding to allow automatic bidding and not accept your offer of $200 as a legitimate bid like a real auction would. Real auctions do not start everything at $5, no reserve or during a snowstorm you would be buying corvette's for $5.

Since you have to pay insertion fees based on the starting bid, or reserve price, that insertion fee could be quite high.

In this case, the buyer did not need to know I want $XXXX, but someone legitimately offered a higher amount and the seller wanted to maximized that offer by bidding it up.

[mznb1u]

during a snowstorm you would be buying corvette's for $5.

Let me know when that snowstorm is going to be!   I'll take two!

  Tim

[Kilroy]

I honestly can't tell you if it was shill bidding or a newbie not aware of the inside tricks of Ebay. Shrug. i was once an Ebayer with a zero feedback, and I've run up  bids in 5 or $10 increments trying to get the highesatbisd  with the least amount of my money.