HELP dutch auction bidding? QUICK!!!

snapmohr

HEllo I want to bid on a dutch auction on e-bay. There are only two items with three bidders so far. When I place my bid is that the one and only bid I can place...in other words is my "max bid" the only bid I can place or can I still go in and keep bidding if I get outbid? One person has bid $30 one $10.50 one $11.75 I really want one of these sets. If I understand it right at this point the winning bidders would be the $30 and the $11.75 but the price they would pay would only be $11.75 if it closed right now, is this correct? So if I bid $33 to make sure I get one then US two top winners ould then have to pay $30, right? Never bid on a dutch auction need suggetstions....help!
snapmohr

joeyuk

I think they ask you how many when you bid. All winning bidders pay the same price. The lowest winning bid.

ddink

That's right, if you bid on one and bid $33 and won, the winning total would be $30.

hrlaser

<< <i>HEllo I want to bid on a dutch auction on e-bay. There are only two items with three bidders so far. When I place my bid is that the one and only bid I can place...in other words is my "max bid" the only bid I can place or can I still go in and keep bidding if I get outbid? One person has bid $30 one $10.50 one $11.75 I really want one of these sets. If I understand it right at this point the winning bidders would be the $30 and the $11.75 but the price they would pay would only be $11.75 if it closed right now, is this correct? So if I bid $33 to make sure I get one then US two top winners ould then have to pay $30, right? Never bid on a dutch auction need suggetstions....help!
snapmohr >>



Yes, you can go in and increase your bid any time before the auction closes. You can also increase the quantity of items you are bidding on.

It's confusing.. I'll try to explain with a simple example.

Let's say the seller is selling three widgets in a Dutch Auction. You go look at the auction and see the following high bid history..

Bidder #1 - $10.00 Quantity 1
Bidder #2 - $5.00 Quantity 1
Bidder #3 - $4.00 Quantity 3

At this point, if the auction were to close, each person would get one widget and they would pay $4.00 for it, the lowest winning bid. There are only three widgets, so even though bidder #3 wins, he only gets one widget, not three.

Now let's say the auction has a couple minutes left and you want one of those widgets so you jump in and bid $12.00. The bid history would then be..

Bidder #1 - $12.00 Quantity 1
Bidder #2 - $10.00 Quantity 1
Bidder #3 - $5.00 Quantity 1

Mr. $4.00 who bid on three of them gets pushed off the list by your bid and he doesn't get any. Now if the seller was offering ten of these things instead of three, then Mr. $4.00 would still be on the list, and if the auction closed as it was, the lowest winning bid would be $4.00, he would get his three at $4.00 each, and the other three bidders would get one each for $4.00.

However, if seconds before the auction closes, some sniper jumps in and bids on all three of them for $14.00 each, and the auction closes, thus changing the winning bidder list to

Bidder #1 - $14.00 Quantity 3

He gets all three, pays $42.00, and no one else gets anything.

The results of a Dutch Auction vary depending on whether or not the number of widgets being sold matches or is under the number of widgets bid on. But the winner(s) always pay the LOWEST winning bid. And people who bid on more than one widget might not necessarily get them depending on how many widgets are accounted for in the bids higher than his..

It's confusing until it clicks in your mind the way Dutch Auctions work..

I'd never sell anything in Dutch Auctions. Ever. If I had ten identical somethings, I'd sell them singly, spreading them out, trying not to compete with myself. Buyers can find some incredible bargains in Dutch Auctions because of the lowest bid is the winning bid thing..

eBay used to have a rule that if you listed 10 or more auctions for identical widgets that you HAD to do a Dutch Auction. I'm not sure if they still have that rule, because I can find many sellers who are selling way more then ten identical widgets in separate non-Dutch auctions, so either they changed that rule, got rid of it, or sellers are simply ignoring it and eBay isn't policing it any more..

snapmohr

Just filling you in on my first dutch auction experience....I lost! LOL Me and another person were in the top two spots for the coins so We would each get one set....but at the last second that person placed his bid for $5.00 over mine to be top bidder and put that he wanted two sets instead of one (one set, of the two is what he had the whole time bidding) SO he got both of them...that was sneaky!!

oh well
Snapmohr

snapmohr

THANKS hrlaser!!! That was an excellent explianation!! I will probably never bid on another dutch auction again as I got totally sniped!! I will just chalk it up to another lesson learned in life, SNIPE HAPPENS lol
snapmohr