18/7/09

slr2moons: a self-portrait, of me in my usual habitat: in front of my computer monitors! (Bwa?)
Help me figure something out, minna. I've been prowling ebay recently, bidding on manga lot auctions, and I see that one bidding trait I noticed waaaaay back when I joined ebay all those years ago still holds true. And I'm wondering WHY people do this.

Let me set up the conundrum. Say there's an item I want to win. Current bid is $1.00, which is also the starting price. I debate the item's worth, shipping, my budget, etc, and decide I will pay $20 for it. So that's how much I bid: $20.

The item already had one bidder, so the current price had been $1. My bid increases the price to $1.25, which means the first bidder, who I outbid, had only bid $1.

Later, the original bidder returns and tries to outbid me. First they bid $2.50, then $5, then $10, then $15, then $25. That last bid finally defeats me, and the auction price ends up $20.50, with them as high bidder. I do not bid again, as $20 really was all I was willing to pay.

My question is: if the original bidder was willing to pay $25 for the item, then why didn't they bid $25 in the first place? If they had bid that much originally, the price would have remained at $1 unless someone came along and tried to outbid them. If no one did, they would have won at $1, even though they were willing to go up to $25. It would not have cost them any extra to just bid $25 from the start.

I have witnessed this happening countless times in my 10 years of ebay bidding. Sometimes the tiny increments bidder manages to defeat me, sometimes they don't. I once saw someone bid 8 times in a row before they finally knocked me out of the running.

So. What is the reasoning behind this pattern of behavior? Any theories?

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slr2moons: a self-portrait, of me in my usual habitat: in front of my computer monitors! (Default)
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