Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/01/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Christer Almqvist wrote: > I wish everybody would publish their reserve prices like on the list > below; makes life much easier for the bidder. I never understood why > one has a starting price lower than the reserve price: Perhaps > somebody can explain the logic, if any, to me. There's at least two reasons: First, the insertion fee goes up based on how high your starting price is. The lower you make it, the less you pay. Second, it's an auction, and so people can get carried away while bidding something up. A high initial price tag is likely to scare away many buyers, while a low one encourages them to bid. Case in point: a few weeks ago, I auctioned off a Leica M3 with a 50mm 'cron. I set the starting bid to what I thought was a fair price, and not a single person bid. After it ended, I set a starting price of $.01, made my BIN the same price as my original opening bid, and put a reserve about a hundred dollars less than that. Sure enough, I received a ton of questions about the camera, the auction ended with 12 bids, and someone snagged it for the BIN price shortly before the auction ended (and got a great deal, too). People are funny that way. chris - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html