Okay, I've been away for all this speculation. I didn't mean to leave you hanging.
Here's the deal:
I set up the auction with an opening bid, a reserve and a Buy It Now price.
The guy in question (not the winning bidder, by the way) placed his bids within the first twelve hours. He may or may not have been an inexperienced bidder. I don't think he was. I suspect that he really wanted the car, but he either didn't have, or didn't want to spend, what it would take to "Buy It Now". But, he wanted to take that option off the table for someone who had deeper pockets that he did. He placed a few bids until he cleared the reserve, at which time the Buy It Now price drops off the table. He didn't win the car anyway, though he had the chance.
In reality, I ended up wasting $2 on a BIN option. He may have screwed me out of a couple of hundred dollars and the chance to sell the car a few days sooner, but that's the chance I took by setting up the auction this way. I will say that I didn't expect it to go down this way, but I should have seen this as a plausible outcome. Since I tend to snipe as a bidder, I didn't consider that a crafty bidder might show his cards early in the auction in order to take the Buy It Now option away for everyone else.
Fool me once...
I've had that backfire on the bidder, though. Several auctions have ended above the "buy-it-now" because they bid high enough early on to get rid of the buy-it-now. At least once it was many hundreds more than the buy-it-now. I didn't mind.
That's kind of what I was hoping for after day one. Didn't happen.
Raze
SuperDork
1/15/13 3:03 p.m.
So a plausible strategy is to put the reserve very close to the BIN on this auction, say $100 less, that way you basically get to start your auction at the BIN price, and go from there 
Yes, I suppose, though I've always felt that was a very douchey way to go about it. It's an auction, not a classified ad.
I just had some stuff end at $1100 over the buy It now. I'm not complaining...
dculberson wrote:
Swank Force One wrote:
Second guy bid to $2550 in the middle of it all, which is all that's confusing me. Automatic bid, in this case.
Look at the date stamp on the $2550 bid, it was 01/13 at 16:48, so was 6 days after the "n***n" bidder placed his three bids. It shows in the middle due to the amount. I'm not sure why the system even let him place that bid.
That time isn't correct. Ebay often doesn't show the automatic bids until after the auction is completed. The list there is true bid order. The automatics (grey) are the ones that have the wonky times.
Swank Force One wrote:
dculberson wrote:
Swank Force One wrote:
Second guy bid to $2550 in the middle of it all, which is all that's confusing me. Automatic bid, in this case.
Look at the date stamp on the $2550 bid, it was 01/13 at 16:48, so was 6 days after the "n***n" bidder placed his three bids. It shows in the middle due to the amount. I'm not sure why the system even let him place that bid.
That time isn't correct. Ebay often doesn't show the automatic bids until after the auction is completed. The list there is true bid order. The automatics (grey) are the ones that have the wonky times.
What do you mean, specifically, by "automatics?" Like I said previously, now that the auction is over and there are other bids, you can't see it first hand, but the bid price was at $2999 with only three bids, and all three were from the same guy. They aren't going to have a mystery bid that is reflected in the current bid amount but not shown in the list of bids, are they? Besides, a $2550 bid isn't going to make the "current bid" go to $2999. And Woody says he had a reserve.
dculberson wrote:
Swank Force One wrote:
dculberson wrote:
Swank Force One wrote:
Second guy bid to $2550 in the middle of it all, which is all that's confusing me. Automatic bid, in this case.
Look at the date stamp on the $2550 bid, it was 01/13 at 16:48, so was 6 days after the "n***n" bidder placed his three bids. It shows in the middle due to the amount. I'm not sure why the system even let him place that bid.
That time isn't correct. Ebay often doesn't show the automatic bids until after the auction is completed. The list there is true bid order. The automatics (grey) are the ones that have the wonky times.
What do you mean, specifically, by "automatics?" Like I said previously, now that the auction is over and there are other bids, you can't see it first hand, but the bid price was at $2999 with only three bids, and all three were from the same guy. They aren't going to have a mystery bid that is reflected in the current bid amount but not shown in the list of bids, are they? Besides, a $2550 bid isn't going to make the "current bid" go to $2999. And Woody says he had a reserve.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/automatic-bidding.html
I'm saying there was a bid of $2550 by the second bidder. First bidder had his first max bid set at $2500. Ebay will automatically bid up by proxy for you with their automatic bidding system by a certain amount ($50 in this case) until you reach your maximum bid.
What happened was first bidder set $2500.
Second bidder got an "automatic" bid in for $2550. (We don't know what second bidder's max was set at, so the reaction of first bidder is a bit fuzzy)
First bidder saw this and just jacked it up further. (Past second bidder's set maximum at that point."
And i'm sure he was playing the reserve/BIN game as well.
You guys have looked at this much more closely than I have!
Well. This car has finally left my possession. It's been sold and paid in full for over a month, but the buyer was in charge of the shipping arrangements and went through a broker who set him up with a driver that kept missing pick up dates and wouldn't answer his phone. Finally he said his "trailer is broken" and backed out of the deal.
Fortunately, the buyer was able to get another shipper to haul it and I couldn't be happier with his choice. In fact, he mentioned that they go from Vermont to Florida every week with their three car trailer. I'll bypass the brokers next time I need a car moved and deal directly with them from now on.
The_Jed wrote:
I was going to ask for a tutorial for those unfamiliar with checking/setting the valve lash on a Honda (myself) but, there it is.
I had no idea it was a regular maintenance procedure for a semi-modern Honda. I'm used to hearing about that sort of thing with 'Murican V8's that have big, nasty bumpsticks and solid lifters.
Learn something every day!
1970 LT1 350, 360hp in a Camaro. Valve covers off every 2500 miles readjusting the rocker and valve lash. But it was a hell of an engine!
