Great video primer on the mathematics of auctions

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/07/great-video-primer-on-the-math.html

1 Like

I will have to watch later, but for ebay ALWAYS use a bid sniper program.

It does two things:

  1. It keeps you from getting carried away. Lock in your max and walk away.

  2. It doesn’t make a target for competitors. Let’s say something is worth $100. You lock in your bid at $100 on the bid sniper program. But the item right now is only at $50. There is another person interested and he too is willing to spend $100 but he is going to be by hand. The tendency is for people to put in a lower bid, and then up it manually if needed. So lets say he puts in a $75 bid. Since your bid isn’t entered yet, he will have the high bid at $55. Let’s assume that no other bidders bid on it, and bam, yours comes in at the end and you snag it for $80, with out giving him a chance to outbid you again.

It is even BETTER when that person UNDERBIDS their max. So let’s say he is willing to put in $100, but only puts in $55, as that is all he needs to be the high bidder. With out any other interest and not knowing you are interest, he leaves it at that bid. Bam, when your bid comes in at the last minute, it only needs $60 to win.

With out a bid sniper, what ends up happening often is people see you as the high bidder and try to out bid you. Now, some times they are just willing to pay more and win. But again, you gave them that target price to beat. What is worse, though, is when they are only willing to go to say $90, and they challenged your $100 bid and drive it up to $95. You still won, but paid more because the loser drove your price up because you gave him a target.

The not so fast talking Tig Notaro took a crack at it here.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.