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eBay Adventures
Teri and I did our first bidding together on eBay over the weekend, and got two rare books in the "Tim" series by Edward Ardizzone for a good price. In the process I realized that the smartest thing to do is to place your first bid bid as close to the close of the auction as possible, with a backup maximum bid a few dollars higher.
Yes, that's probably obvious to almost everyone, but it was a discovery for me.
At one point Teri started bidding on a book for herself, and discovered the power of eBay's maximum bid scam. It's pretty sleazy; for those who aren't familiar with eBay, when you place a bid they invite you to put a maximum bid in as well. Then if anyone else bids, eBay automatically bids you one increment higher than them.
The problem is that if more than one person does a maximum bid, the price automatically rises to just over the second-highest maximum bid. Since eBay takes their cut out of the winning bid price (sort of), this encourages high prices and enhances their profits - but it isn't good for people who want to buy things cheaply!
Anyway, Teri was bidding on a book online, when I had a sudden suspicion. She'd last bid $19, and if she wanted to stay in the lead the new bid would have to be $21.50; that sounded like an awfully high price for a relatively new book, even one in hardcover. So I had her wait on that bid, and popped over to Amazon.com...where I found the exact same book, NEW, for $7.98. With shipping, a little over eleven dollars.
We let the auction go and bought the book from (choke) Amazon.
It's important to be a smart shopper.
Yes, that's probably obvious to almost everyone, but it was a discovery for me.
At one point Teri started bidding on a book for herself, and discovered the power of eBay's maximum bid scam. It's pretty sleazy; for those who aren't familiar with eBay, when you place a bid they invite you to put a maximum bid in as well. Then if anyone else bids, eBay automatically bids you one increment higher than them.
The problem is that if more than one person does a maximum bid, the price automatically rises to just over the second-highest maximum bid. Since eBay takes their cut out of the winning bid price (sort of), this encourages high prices and enhances their profits - but it isn't good for people who want to buy things cheaply!
Anyway, Teri was bidding on a book online, when I had a sudden suspicion. She'd last bid $19, and if she wanted to stay in the lead the new bid would have to be $21.50; that sounded like an awfully high price for a relatively new book, even one in hardcover. So I had her wait on that bid, and popped over to Amazon.com...where I found the exact same book, NEW, for $7.98. With shipping, a little over eleven dollars.
We let the auction go and bought the book from (choke) Amazon.
It's important to be a smart shopper.