NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Greg B
Date: 2014 Jan 12, 14:19 -0500
there are three types of sellers: first are sellers who are emotionally invested in the item they are selling. I.e; "this was my novice ham rig back in '68"
or "I used this sextant when I was in the navy" to them, it is worth more than it's actual worth, so they feel it should be worth that to you. I actually
said to one guy at a flea market after the "this was my novice ham rig...bla bla bla" speech; Ah, gee - then you should keep it! - and walked away.
the second type of seller is the guy who camps out at estate sales to be the first on line - he's probably even read the poor guys obit to see if there
is anything he should be looking for - if he buys something, he knows right from the start what he has, and what the market will bear. I found out
my Luna sextant came from one of those estate sale guys, luckily, he didn't have any takers at his original price and dropped it & re-listed it.
The third type is my kind of guy - he doesn't need something anymore so he prices it to move. BTW: something I hate is the "robo-bid" option on
ebay - you go to bid on a item and your asked how much your willing to pay (say $500.), and what dollar increment to use (say $1.) the ebay server then
keeps out bidding other bidders on your behalf 1 dollar over the previous bidder each bid until you run up to your limit. Still compared to what goes on
on 'Craig s List' it is not that bad.
On 01/12/2014 01:23 PM, Brad Morris wrote:
The seller owes his fees to eBay, regardless of whether it sold or not. So now the seller is invested in the process.
Psychologically, buyers want to know that the item is going to sell and that they are bidding for "real". Reserves indicate (to me) that the seller has an unrealistic price on the item, so I shouldn't waste my time. Far better to set the minimum bid to your reserve and "let the item go"! In this case, the seller may wish for a minimum of $800. For buyers, this represents an attractive price for the unit. It will encourage bids. So set the minimum bid (not the reserve) at that price. It is effectively the same.
Consider the seller's alternative. With a masked reserve, we don't know if his reserve is $80 or $8000; now I suddenly don't care. The actual bidding reflected that. Or I can poke around and discover that I have bid enough to meet his reserve but its too high.
In years past, you could retract a bid. So to discover a reserve, you just bid $100000 then retracted it. The reserve price is revealed at no risk. eBay determined that this practice was not appropriate and discouraged buyers. They have not halted the process. To my knowledge, you can still do this. Just don't abuse it!
Brad
On Jan 12, 2014 9:42 AM, "Eric van der Veen" <ericvdveen{at}tiscali.nl> wrote:
Today it briefly reappeared for a BuyNow price of 800 USD, then was withdrawn because of an error in the offer. I suspect that 800 USD is the seller's minimum or reserve price that he mistakenly entered as BuyNow, and that it will appear again. With the last bidding round halting at USD 515, it thus seems possible to obtain this for around 1000 USD.
Eric
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