NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Mike Mayer
Date: 2014 Jan 12, 16:58 -0600
Items with no reserve may ultimately sell for a higher price since more people get interested in it. I have sold camera equipment and find that putting a low initial bid and no reserve is the best approach. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything go for close to the initial bid.
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Mike Mayer
From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Brad Morris
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2014 12:23 PM
To: mwmayer@tds.net
Subject: [NavList] Re: Japanese Bygrave slider rule on Ebay
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Today it briefly reappeared for a BuyNow price of 800 USD, then was withdrawn because of an error in the offer.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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