Trab ski auction: your input wanted

I appreciate all of your thoughts and suggestions on this question, lordhedgie. Your PM-based auction idea could work, but that means I have to be around every day, not just on the last day! And talk about the potential for cheating (not that I would ever participate in that, but the process wouldn't exactly be transparent). I'm leaning toward a traditional auction, mainly because I can't see any practical way around the sniping issue that can be worked out in a reasonable time (and I need to get this auction going).

When we are discussing eBay sniping, are we thinking about the same thing? Last time I was trying to get something on eBay was about 8 months ago. I'm pretty sure that automatic bidding (not sure the eBay term) had been in place for a while, and in my experience that has not eliminated sniping. In fact, my experience from participating in a number of auctions (with auto bidding in place) was that bids in the last minute always occurred, and I learned that if I wanted to be in the game I had to be online at the close and prepared to up my bid. It makes sense to me that there is an incentive to snipe. If my limit for an item is $200, and it looks like the winning bid is going to be $205, then by sniping I can get the item for just 5% more ($210) than I had originally targeted. For me, this is definitely within the range of value I can accurately assign to the item, so I'm inclined to up my bid a little beyond my target, win the auction, and be done.

I'm still not convinced that sniping is all that bad. Is sniping really "cheating"? It doesn't seem to break the auction rules. Sniping does necessitate that one be available at the end, but in a live auction the situation is pretty much the same, isn't it? Of course in a live auction there is no cutoff time, and that's where the "sniping" comes into play in an online auction.

You are right that there is no way to know how many people might bid on these skis, and also to know if new people might appear just to bid. I'm hoping that someone who's been around here for a while can score these skis (and I will be happy if they get a good deal) but there's no real way to make sure this is how things turn out.

You're right that online auctions created the sniping phenom, simply because a "real" auctioneer would just extend the auction.  I mentioned before you could emulate that in an on-line auction, but since all the potential buyers aren't logged in and bidding at the same time, the resulting auction would be lengthy, time-consuming (on your part), and complicated.

My view is that sniping is considered Harmful.  The goal of sniping is to get an item cheaper, ergo, sniping reduces the amount of money the auction generates.  In addition, sniping creates ill feelings on the part of bidders that lost auctions to snipers; they watch someone else buy something that they wanted, at a price they were willing to pay, simply because they were online at a later time.  When two snipers compete against each other, it turns into a coin flip to see who wins.

I'm not sure that I'm being clear on why I feel that eBay has "solved" sniping, since sniping obviously does occur on eBay still.  My view is simply that eBay has removed the incentive for sniping, and snipers are wasting thier efforts.  Those who are upset that they are sniped are simply not reading eBay's rules closely enough.  Here's why:

If you want to buy a used foo on eBay, you should decide how much you are willing to pay for that foo.  Let's say the foo is currently bidding for $40, but you know you can't buy that foo for less than $200 in the store.  So you decide you're willing to pay $150, and no more.  You should bid $150, and not less.

eBay will cast your bid as $41.  As other people bid up the price, eBay will automatically raise your bid to keep you as the highest bidder.  Let's say eBay bids you up to $100 going into the final seconds.  Your wife walks out in a teddy and demands you get off the computer, so you log off and head for the bedroom.

In the morning, you are shocked to discover that you didn't win.  Someone sniped you!  The only way a sniper could have won the auction, however, would have been to bid over $150.  So the sniper wins the foo for $155, and you end up empty handed.  But you shouldn't be upset, because to beat the sniper you would have had to pay $160 for a used foo, when you decided it was only worth $150.

So getting sniped may be a psychological shock when you discover you didn't win, but it means that either

(a) You bid less than you were willing to pay, which is provably a poor strategy on eBay, or
(b) Someone else was willing to pay more than you.

All of this goes way beyond the original point of the thread, but as long as Charles doesn't ban me, or at least tell me to shut up, I'll continue to interpret "Hot Air" and "Random Tracks" liberally.

lordhedgie, you won't be banned because you are on-topic for this thread, and I was the one who started this thread (and besides, this is not the kind of thing that starts me thinking about a ban).

Your sniping example is a good description of exactly what I've seen happen. But what if the "you" in the story declined his wife's invitation so that he could be ready to re-snipe at the last second? He sees the last minute bid come in at $155, and so with five seconds left he puts in his bid for $160 and wins the auction. He might look at things this way: paid 6.6% more than his original target, but didn't end up wasting all that time he invested in finding, researching, and pursuing the auction item. He's done - got what he wanted for a small premium over his original target. This is why I think there is a sort of built in incentive to snipe. Not that I like sniping, but I've seen it so much that it seems to be a standard part of the game now, and I view it as just another part of online auctions that has to be dealt with.

I'm not sure that I understand how the goal of sniping is to get an item cheaper. By definition sniping increases the price at the last minute, doesn't it? If sniping occurs but doesn't top the highest auto bid, it has still pushed up the final price. If the sniping does top the highest auto bid, then it has pushed the final price even higher. In your example, the seller got $155 rather than $150 (max auto bid), and in my re-snipe example, $160 rather than $150. I would think the seller would be happy that sniping occurred!

I suppose that a way to remove the most annoying aspect of sniping and make an online auction more like a live auction would be to have the end time automatically extended by a last minute bid. For example, "bidding closes at 1:30 pm or 15 minutes after the latest bid received later than 1:15 pm". A last second snipe would thus give everyone another 15 minutes to consider upping their bid. To stay in the game, one would have to be present at the end and keep at it until the extension expired, just like a live auction.

As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, this could work for the ski auction here, couldn't it? No admin action required, the bids are all public, and everyone can see if a bid made the time cutoff (every post is automatically time stamped when posted). There must be a flaw in this idea that I'm not seeing.

Charles, you're absolutely right that you could do a live auction as you describe. Thinking about it, it might be the best way to go in your situation. The only hassle then is picking a time good for everyone -- not many people will dedicate an afternoon to an auction of a single ski. A weeknight seems best -- weekends are ski days, Friday nights are drinking nights, and many folks can't watch a website at work. As long as the rules were clear, you wouldn't need to be present... A "15 minutes from last bid" might result in bids being placed 16 minutes after the last bid, but you could invalidate that after the fact. Again, this style will limit your potential audience further, but avoiding work seems to be a key decision factor for ya.

Oh, and I strongly recommend that any bid that is later edited is invalidated. You wouldn't want anyone bidding $2000 up front, then seconds before the auction ends changing the bid to $50.

On second thought, I would suggest that you did monitor it live in case anything unexpected happened, like someone accidently putting an extra zero in a bid, or making illegal bids less than the minimum increment (I raise your $200 to $200.01).

My point with the sniping example is if you think you would have been willing to pay $160, then you should have bid $160. If you got sniped by someone bidding $165, then you shouldn't be upset, because you thought the item was worth $165, not $175. If someone snipes you with a bid you would have been willing to place, you should have placed that bid. eBay will auto-respond to snipes up to the limit you tell it, so why would you set that limit lower than you are willing to pay?

From the point of the seller, you absolutely don't want to see sniping. If Steve snipes the auction at the last second and earns you an extra $5, you might be excited... Until you realize that Alice would have put in a counter-bid and raised the price had Steve bid in a reasonable timeframe, instead of sniping. You got a lower price than you should have because Alice was denied the opportunity to bid.

On eBay, the situation is different, assuming that everyone uses eBay's auto-bid feature. Should Steve put in a last-minute bid that is less than Alice's max bid, then the final selling price goes up, and the seller has no reason to complain. There's effectively no difference between that and an earlier bid by Steve, so it's not a big deal.

OK, I guess I see your point about the sniping and the final price. Given the complicated psychology involved, and the different mindsets of different participants, however, I find it hard to pin this down in a definite way.

You are right about editing bids. I am setting up the bidding thread so that bid posts can be neither edited nor deleted, so that should take care of this issue (I hope). There will still remain the "bid error" issue.

Yes, the question of picking a time. Contrary to logic (at least mine), as I recall the most active times on the forum do seem to be during working hours on weekdays. Definitely want to avoid Friday afternoon through Sunday for a closing time. Because I need to get this auction going, and want to avoid running into the Thanksgiving week, I'm thinking about starting the auction this Thursday and running for one week, ending on Thursday, 11/20. I will have to look at the stats to decide on an end time - afternoon or evening - trying to choose a time that will allow the most people to be present. It will not be possible to set up the "perfect" auction.

I will attach an image showing hourly stats (whole web site, but should reflect the forum as well).

It looks like the best sustained activity is late morning hours. In the evening things pick back up in the 8 to 9 pm period but then drop quickly. I'm inclined to go for something like 10 am for an official end time, which would be extended if there were last minute bids.