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

[jtroutman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is all last second sniping these days,except when it is "buy it now" ending the auction. It does make good sense to time the auctions so that they end on a weekend or at a time when people who are likely to buy that item are going to be browsing and looking.

It seems to me that that the auctions processes themselves are not setting market prices anymore, but the overall market forces on ebay. When people offer stuff for insane prices with high reserves, no one bids on those auctions. When the prices come down to what the market thinks is reasonable, there are bids.