[ale] OT: Cheap part hight shipping

[Ben Coleman]

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Pete Hardie wrote:

| I hate these with a passion - I mean, if you aren't going to sell
| it for less that $100, why isn't the minimum bid $100?  Starting at
|  $1 just feeds the auction junkies and makes anyone really
| interested in the object fight through idiots.


Because starting lower than the minimum *does* attract more bidders
than starting at the minimum, and they're not necessarily all 'auction
junkies'.  I don't usually use the reserve feature myself - I take my
chances - but I've found that starting at a lower initial bid can
attract enough bidders to eventually make the selling price higher.
For a lot of people, once they've actually bid on an auction, threre's
a reluctance to let it go, and it may convince them to bid more than
they would have initially.  The reserve auction gives sellers a way to
take advantage of this while still having a safety net.

Ben

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