Re: Follow up to buying photo equipment on ebay

wilt wrote:
It is a common practice for people to wait until seconds before the
bidding closes to submit final bid. I forget the term for it, but it
is no different than being at a real auction. At a real auction
someone can submit a bid up to the point that the gavel sounds on the
lecturn, and outbid you. The biggest difference is that in a real
auction the bidding continues until it is apparent that no one else
wants to submit a higher bid. Ebay just closes the bidding even though
you might be willing to up the bid higher than the one submitted at the
last minute!

As you say, it is slightly different to a live auction as they are not time limited, so you can't put in a last second bid. If you do so just before the gavel falls the auctioneer re-opens the bidding in effect and someone else can still bid.
I don't know how else a Web auction could work though, other than how eBay do it. I suppose you could have all interested parties on-line at once and do it like live auctions, but that'd be tricky to arrange, and when you factor in the world-wide 'audience' it would be even more tricky.

.

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