eBay hurts my caveman brain

[prog]

Just took everything but the Wii game down from eBay. In the early part of the decade I was quite comfortable with eBay but I clearly don't understand this system any more; after four days my PS2 games each had zero bids but several "watchers". I am not sure what that means - I assume they were using an internal bookmarking service? - but whatever these "watchers" were doing they couldn't be bothered to make a $1 opening bid on any of the games, and that's just odious. No game for you. (Present company excluded, of course.)

The Wii game has nine watchers but three bids so that's OK. Seriously, though, is it just sniping? Has it advanced to such an art in the last few years that nobody bids like normal anymore?

This system would be less broken if any bid extended an auction's cutoff by an hour. I have been saying this for years. Bah.

Comments

[jaq.livejournal.com]

In my experience, people will watch items they are interested in, but most bids come in the last few hours or minutes (or for those using sniping tools, seconds) of the auction. People want to leave it late so they avoid getting into a bidding war and pushing up the price.