The Auction Problem
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- The next time you buy a retro game or old t-shirt in an online auction, thank William Vickrey’s 1961 paper, “Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders” -- because the simple auction style we take for granted today is actually filled with nuance and complexity.
Auctions have been around as long as one person has had an item to get rid of and at least two people wanted it. From Herodotus’ writing, we know that the ancient Babylonians held auctions over 4,000 years ago. But auctions haven’t changed very much over time, and the general bidding structures have remained intact. It seems like aside from differences like submitting a single private bid vs. open bidding back and forth, there isn’t a lot to adjust.
That couldn’t be further from the truth, as advances in auction theory in economics have changed our understanding of optimal bidding and optimal selling. By formulating the revenue equivalence theorem and working out the sometimes-harmful incentives in different auction formats, Vickrey and those who followed him are making the complexity of everyday transactions invisible.
** SOURCES **
Vickrey, William. “Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders.” The Journal of Finance, vol. 16, no. 1, 1961, pp. 8-37. www.jstor.org/stable/2977633
Güth, Werner, et al. “A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of Bidding Behavior in Vickrey-Auction Games.” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, vol. 139, no. 2, 1983, pp. 269-288. www.jstor.org/stable/40750595
Rothkopf, Michael H., et al. “Why Are Vickrey Auctions Rare?” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 98, no. 1, 1990, pp. 94-109. www.jstor.org/stable/2937643
Rothkopf, Michael H., and Ronald M. Harstad. “Two Models of Bid-Taker Cheating in Vickrey Auctions.” The Journal of Business, vol. 68, no. 2, 1995, pp. 257-267. www.jstor.org/stable/2353115
Lucking-Reiley, David. “Vickrey Auctions in Practice: From Nineteenth-Century Philately to Twenty-First-Century E-Commerce.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 14, no. 3, 2000, pp. 183-192. www.jstor.org/stable/2646925
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Micheal Stevens is like: “I just spent $8,000 on a PS5.
...or did I?” *Music plays*
So True xD
I've heared it
“I bid $8,000 for the PS5. That means I pay $8,000, plus tax, right? Wrong! First of all, I’m participating in a Vickrey auction, which means I only pay how much the second highest bidder bid. Second, I’m committing tax fraud, and nobody can stop me”
@@randomblock1_ I legit heard the "wrong!" lol
@@randomblock1_
That is correct, right ? WRONG! ❌
We do not know the scenario which might vary for every individual.
We are individuals after all, right?
WRONG! ❌❌
We are on a social platform and the UA-cam Algorithm always bring us together at random and good videos.
So, this means we as a whole are 1 user, who gets fantastic videos to see, right?
WRONG! ❌❌❌
What is happening!!!
UA-cam does NOT always give fantastic videos...
Or does it?
No, it doesn't... And that, is the UA-cam Paradox.
As always, thanks for watching.
"I'm real Kevin" is something balloon Kevin would say...
I want you for $3
I want you for $8000 k i won and i will pay $3
@@vunga8195 $8001
Classic ballon Kevin...
And your comment is something a five year old would say. Come on world this is a math video and all yall liking these kindergarten-rate comments?
We are truly living in the movie "idiocracy"
Kevin only did this video to flex to everyone that he got a PS5.
All we saw was a box.
Hey, now it's a tax write-off! A legit business expense.
And a crying Jake Roper
Truely
@@MarvelX42 Music sounds...
I've never seen a balloon host an auction.
At least we have hope that Kevin is still alive. Maybe he had emergency brain surgery after that dart incident.
That's not real kevin, that's human kevin
Me neither, good thing it was real kevin holding the auction
you guys have all been brainwashed.
The real kevin is actually jake
why did you did this
2:17 that is absolutely what you would call a pro gamer move.
The meme has come full circle.
Truly beautiful hearing a Vsauce reference in a Vsauce video
@@KaliTakumi isn't this a VoiceOverPete meme?
@@Real28 Super Mario Quadratics.
@@Real28 someone told voiceoverpete to say it when it was already a trending meme
@@Real28 no, it's a vsauce meme
I think the question we should really be asking is how Kevin even got a PS5
their video production budget is probably fairly large so they can afford to bid super high on ebay i bet
...or did he?
No!
It's just the box
He got it for a cool $8,000 after bidding only $9,000
Maybe by purchasing one?
@@TheCandoRailfan I was making a joke how no one could find one
Ebay is not like a Vickery auction. It's closer to an English auction. It's not sealed, but live. All the bidders have the chance to update their bid as they get outbid.
Not 100%
Bidder A $10,
Bidder B $100, bid shown $11
Bidder A doesn’t know how high bidder B’s limit is. They can keep bidding incrementally but have no idea if the bid is 100 or 10,000. So it’s a live Vickery auction but the actual winning bid upper limit is sealed until beaten and this cycle repeats.
Most people bid last minute so you don’t ever see what the final winning bidder was prepared to pay you only see that they beat the 2nd highest bidder by a small amount.
@@nnickers3355 True, not 100%. But after Bidder A is outbid at $11, he has another chance to up his bid... even past B's $100 at anytime before the auction ends. In a sealed auction, they'd never have that chance.
@@nnickers3355 , bidder B isn't actually bidding $100 to start with. What bidder B is doing is allowing the site to bid on his behalf while setting a hard limit at $100. Real people can do this exact same thing with open auctions in real life by having someone attend the auction and bid for them. Scott Baker is right; Ebay is definitely more of an open auction, not a Vickery auction.
You're actually kind of both right. The key observation here is that English auctions are theoretically equivalent to vickery auctions (The bidder with the highest valuation will win and pay a price equal to the 2nd highest valuation). The key point of the video is that Dutch/1st price sealed bid auctions have different optimal strategies to english/2nd price sealed bid auctions (in one you bid shade, in the other you don't). Ebay is a english/2nd price sealed bid auction, aka vickery auction. Real life English auctions (and ebay) tend to have minimum bid increments for practical reasons (and to avoid user confusion) which makes them look different from sealed 2nd price auctions but that increment could theoretically be arbitrarily small, making them identical from a auction theory standpoint.
Going back to ebay though, ebay is closer to vickery than an English auction as the optimal strategy is to bid your valuation and nothing else, being outbid and bidding higher again doesn't make much sense from an optimal strategy perspective - I would conjecture people don't like to lose so if they are outbid they feel compelled to bid again, even the price now exceeds their valuation. Or perhaps they think that's how you're "supposed" to bid, as they are copying what they've seen in English auctions. To counter this behavior though, some ebay users bid at the very last second of the auction (sniping) not giving the other bidders a chance to reconsider their bid. If all bidders do this, it looks even more like a vickery auction as all bids are essentially sealed. If we assume snipers bid their valuation (the optimal strategy), this has the interesting consequence that sniping is actually a good thing, as it leads to the socially optimal outcome (total combined utility is maximized).
@@Murtag32 interesting conclusion about sniping!
Sure, Michael overpayed on the PS5 but the price of Jake's sadness he got an extreme discount on
Michael used his knowledge of his auction opponents to choose a perfect bid that will guarantee the best possible outcome for him
Pro gamer move
@@albevanhanoy I'm going to do what's called a pro gamer move
Battle cats?
"That's how ebay works". I thought it worked by everyone sniping in a bid for $1 at the last second of the auction, and whoever has the lowest lag wins.
Nope, you just place whatever is the most you are willing to pay for such item on the day the auction ends, then it will automatically bid $1 more than the highest bid on your behalf until your max bid has been reached.
The issue here is that people use bots to try and get in at the last possible moment and force a win no matter what. That forces you to try and drive out people at the lowest price possible so you're free to make that last minute bid.
I thought they worked by the seller making his friends do fake bids in order to raise the price. Also there's a trick where they place a bid then cancel it so that they can see what is the exact sum that you did input.
When no one knows what a joke is
@@daframp2753 The real joke is ebay's system. OP's statement is too straight-up true to be properly funny.
The most unbelievable part of all this is him actually having a ps5
I have 4
@@kiisseli1337 4 PS5s or 1 PS4?
Bait and switch: all we saw was a box.
@@kiisseli1337 scalper
PS5s aren't real.
As someone that spent 5 years writing auction software for use in auction houses around the world I can tell you that the sketchiest and least honest part about the whole process are the auction houses themselves. There are a few reputable ones out there but most are not. The type of auction in this video is easily abused by an auctioneer by just making up fake bids just below the highest one. In fact the majority of companies we dealt with would do this. Harder to get away with in person but for online bidding it is trivial. It is critical that the auctioneer does not know the highest bid.
When I bought my first property I'm pretty sure I was bidding against the seller (on the phone). They kept pushing the price up until it hit the reserve. I don't think there were any other genuine bidders.
8:15 Wow, paying $4000! for the ps5? He must be reeeeeally rich to start bidding in factorials.
Jesus 4000!
4000! WHAT
I, too, bid [OVERFLOW ERROR]
I think that number is larger than all the particles there are in the universe
@@xXxJokerManxXx It's so undefined that there's more digits in that number than particles in the visible universe.
I've always won ebay auctions knowing this. Wait until 5 seconds until the auction ends and place your highest bid at that point. You will get it for less...but never pay more than you want...and win most of the time.
Yes, literally everybody has known about sniping for 20 years. But good job making it to the 21st century 😜
I imagine the conversation went like
"Hey surfshark I need a ps5 for my video"
"Uhmm why?"
"I just need one okay? Dont ask"
"Okay seems legit"
Kevin: *grins internally*
Underrated comment
I love that Kevin is still posting on vsauce, I can only imagine that Michael lost his login info after the isolation room in mindfield and thats why he hasn't been posting
Uhh this is vsauce2, not vsauce lol
Fun fact: vickrey auctions are also how google sells ad space
😱
Googled it and they really used to do that, interesting
mongus
Fun fact: they actually use the GSP right now. Should change in the beginning of 2022.
I’m pretty sure $550.01 is his best bid if it’s worth exactly $550.00 to him.
I usually use that strategy on ebay
.him to $550.00 exactly worth it's if bid best his is $550.01 sure pretty I'm
ebay on strategy that use usually I
@@cjfdnqkn4374 Why did you write that in reverse? Is that just something you do with every comment?
Ah, like the Price is Right.
@@Rukalin don’t i no
I think the dutch style where you start at the highest number and work your way down is the best for the seller. The reasoning behind this is it is as here today gone tomorrow thing where if you don't grab it, it won't be there. It is a pressure thing where someone might jump at $570 when they want to pay $550 to avoid feeling bad when it sells at 551.
an additional advantage is that there is a fixed maximum amount of time that the auction will take. once the clock runs out, the item will not be sold and returned to the seller. auctions where the clock runs up, can take much longer if people keep bidding against each other on an item, especially if they are increasing their bids by small margins each round. so for auction houses trading large amounts of items, like the dutch auctions that sell plants and vegetables, this makes it easier to schedule their auction days and guarantee a minimum amount of items that will be on auction on that day.
Bidders can collude and pay nothing?
"I am Real Kevin!"
Michael: Or are you?
First lets define who is Kevin
@Kylar Cheng Next, lets define where is Kevin.
Another cool thing about Vickrey auctions is that not only are people incentivized to pay what they want, they also are guaranteed to pay less than that amount if they win, meaning they get the item at what they see as a bargain.
I will outbid everyone else for the PS5
I bid 5355355363737473653y27372y2y273636363y3y3y3y3t4y464
No. Me
OH NOOOOOO!!! Most people agree that my vids are the worst on UA-cam. I agree to disagree. Please agree to disagree with the haters, dear jon
Good luck :)
ok
What ebay really proves is that the best way to do auctions is to not do auctions. The "buy it now" feature was added because it turns out that just being able to buy stuff is cool
I like how the beginning of this video was just a flex on Vsauce3
Vickrey auction seems like an attempt to emulate an open auction in a closed one. You're effectively setting a ceiling for what you're willing to pay, which is what people do when the enter an open auction. So the person with the highest ceiling wins and pays a (minimal bid amount) above the second-highest.
Ooooh that makes a lot of sense.
Good stuff
I think you comment on every educational youtuber and also earn subs, please make your subscription list public so i can follow them
And i dont mean it in a bad way! You are an awesome creator who has added value in my life like many others
Bruh
yes
Papa Flammy
Everyone: "But Vickery auctions must only be done for high-priced items like art masterpieces and oil fields."
eBay: "Hold my beer."
I think a big psychological component of the Vickrey auction isn't just knowing that you're getting it for no more than you value it at, but that there is a market (at least one buyer) at the price you paid.
Yes but how unsure of your own decisions and desperate for reassurance do you have to be for a market of 1 to be any kind of reassurance whatsoever? I mean I personally have a horrible obsession with how I'm perceived but even I make my purchasing decisions based on what I want alone and don't consider much else lol
For a second, I thought that was the fastest 12 minutes of my life
you too huh? i had to chk the time
Just pointing out that this is NOT how ebay works. In ebay you know when you are outbid i.e. it is not a sealed auction and also you don't pay the same as the second highest you pay a minimum amount more. These rules change the auction completely.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. There's absolutely an incentive to low-ball until the very last second
Ironic how Balloon Kevin does all this talking about ‘honest’ auctions yet mentions that he’s ‘the real Kevin’.
Everyone: wow look ps5 oh my gawd
Me: where can I get that big chungus painting
big chungus on rampage mobile app :P
my computer science teacher was looking for a ps5 during our lesson
Did he find one?
Lol
That is something that you would expect from micheal $8000 😂😂😂
I know your channel's called Vsauce2 but with the content you've been putting out consistently you'll always be #1 in my heart
I have a studied Economics so nothing was new for me here but it was still so entertaining and interesting. Great job real Kevin!
"i am real kevin" yeah... that sounds a lot like something a NOT real kevin would say
I was cutting onions when I played Jake's PS5, I swear
Found you again!
i love these game theory videos, it's like every chapter of my stats textbook in basic form
Cool episode! Really enjoy these mind games in a smart academic kind of way.
Can we appreciate Kevin for keeping Vsauce active? I miss the old days when they uploaded so much 😢
I find it completely pointless to bid on items that are readily available. The end price is going to probably be retail price, or maybe higher than that so why bother?
I usually only bid on collectibles, everything else is almost always buy now only.
Shut up this doesn’t make you look smart
Exactly. I only bid on things that are available for sale if the bidding is way lower than the market value. Bidding around market value on something you could just buy is a sucker move.
I've definitely bought things below market value on eBay
All the people who want to pay retail price for something readily available will just buy at retail and not bother with auctions. The only people bidding on something readily available on eBay are those who are trying to get a deal, so the winning bid should always be below retail
The major problem with what you're saying is that eBay is not a sealed bid system.
Yes, it's a second-offer auction setup, but with open bids and a minimum bid higher than either a reserve or the last bid in a progressive ascension. If I'm bidding on an item, it's in my best (i.e. most selfish) interest to get in as the second or third bidder on the auction, and having seen a lowball or reasonable price, to increase the bid higher than what I believe anyone else will be willing to pay - a strategy very similar to what occurred with your $8.000 bid. In a sealed second-price auction, the best move is to bid marginally higher than I believe is a fair price for the item, but still in the range I would pay - because either I will win with my high bid or I will both benefit the seller to a greater degree and I will hurt the person who followed my same strategy. This encourages the seller to list more items more often, and it discourages that other selfish buyer and those who observed the results of the auction.
Selfish bidding is consistently the most effective means of bidding in a second-offer system. You lose nothing by a high bid that either wins or loses. A fixed-offer sealed auction is the only one that encourages unselfish behavior.
This is a fantastic video. It's clear and easy to understand your explanations. Thank you for providing this information.
Lowkey he just flexed that he got the PS5
The fact that Vickrey got his Nobel 3 days before he died makes me sad and happy at the same time...😢
Especially since Nobels can't be awarded posthumously, so he got it just in time.
@@coder-un6nf WOW I didn't know that...
So yeah, "just in time" je the word then...😅
I think it’s just a good thing. He got the satisfaction and recognition of the award while he was alive. Even if he only had 72 hours to enjoy it
I hadn't seen this video and started watching it assuming it was posted in October 2021.
Really... hit hard
That this premise is still current and relevant.
Another great video. You never disappoint
I opened youtube and I saw a new video uploaded 2 minutes ago. And guess what? It was from Vsauce2, which means good content!!
Would it be a good idea to do this in reverse? Say you needed a job done, like having your roof reshingled, would it be a good idea to get bids from several companies and then pick the second lowest? Would it stand to reason that the company that put the lowest bid would cut corners or do shoddy work, where as the next to lowest would be likely to have given a low bid but actually have been more honest in what it would take to actually do the job correctly?
second cheapest wine
That photo of Michael with the acknowledgement of the pro gamer move meme right after it might have made me laugh a little bit too hard :'D
Kevin: Makes really interesting and fun to watch videos on educational content.
Us: Are concerned about the wellbeing of a balloon XD
When the video ends but the red bar is only 1/3 the way
*something's wrong i can feel it*
"... painting collector McGee, someone I just made up..."
Oh ok thanks for the clarification
Speaking of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Economics, simultaneous multi-round auctions are worthy of a video on their own.
TIL there are more than two types of auctions.
I only ever imagined auctions in the open-format bid-war style that's synonymous with most characterizations of an auction and the closed-envelope "sealed auction" with one bid per person and highest bid wins outright.
I can't believe balloon Kevin was holding an auction for a PS5, and real kevin only bid $3
2:16 is probably gonna turn into a new meme format
I remember reading about an auctioning system in sealed bids but then the second highest bidder wins. The idea behind was to make sure everybody has a fair chance and prevent someone who could bid a lot more than everyone else from simply outbid the system. How is this called?
for absolutely years I've been searching for this end song for vsauce 2, I've scoured the music links in the description but never found it. Can anyone help?
Real Kevin for the win!
Stop hating on him Balloon Kevin
They should make an auction where the bidders pay their bid no matter if they win or not. I can't even imagine what it would go like, you'd think that people would just bid very low and the auction wont profit, but if there are a lot of people they might actually get more money.
Isn't that how Honey or w/e works? I thought of this too, i'm pretty sure there is a site like that. I'd imagine the seller lists a mandatory price and as long as the total reaches it (or exceeds it), then the highest bidder gets it.
What's interesting is that Vickrey auctions aren't used more often in computer and board games. Most MMO RPG auction houses for example have systems where the highest bidder pays the price they bid or systems where sellers place items up at a desired price and buyers offer amounts at a desired price. But I don't think I've ever seen one that does a Vickrey system .
That was a serious pro gamer move tho. (He did outbid everyone even though he might have lost a kidney or two doing it)
3:06 I almost left the video how dar u
I love this channel.
I had a feeling Michael would be number 4. Good stuff, Sir.
5:29 That box is definitely empty
You can see how light it is...
wholesome 100
Thank you!
NPR's Planet Money just did an episode (11/6/20) called "Hacking The Perfect Auction" on how people figured out how the game the FCC auction of electromagnetic spectrum defeating the Vickrey Auction. It's a great companion to this!
10:32 "In 4,500 years of thinking about auctions, the mathematical development optimizing the activity of billions of people is really close to just... being honest."
_The Religious Society of Friends liked that._
Hello there Kevin •_•
im not kevin but hi to you
@@EtherBotGames good bot
@@ViratKohli-jj3wj hi to you as well
Except for the fact that people get caught up in the bidding “war” on eBay and some people decide to “snipe” in at the last minute to drive the amount higher. This causes people who were previously bidding to suffer from the “endowment effect” because they THINK they already won it, basically destroying eBay as a Vickrey Auction because it actually functions as a traditional English auction with an ability to proxy bid rather than a TRUE Vickrey Auction. In a properly run Vickrey Auction no one ever knows the bids until AFTER all bidding closes but the information obtained via eBay auctions by all bidders sabotages it as a true Vickrey scheme.
There is a key difference between a standard Vickerey auction and eBay, though.
In the standard auction, everyone submits their bid at once and the bids are revealed in the end. In an eBay auction, the bids are "open" in the way that each bidder at least knows the second-highest bid. So the ideal strategy in an eBay auction is to wait until the very last second to bid, giving the highest price you're willing to pay. This practice is called bid sniping and the most common way these auctions are won.
Micheal is truly a Gamer, paying $8000 for a PS5
Glad to be so early.
You didn't even finish it
another great vid. thanks
honesty is always the most efficient in anything ever
sending virtual hugs to everyone who needs it stay safe and stay possitive everyone! 💡:)
Pov: you're trying to comment something funny
5:57
what happens to the words "equal probability" as you hand goes back to the left? is this some greenscreen or something? the words get shakey
Interesting fact: The ancient Babylonian auctions written about by ancient Greek historian Herodotus (mentioned at 10:24 of the video) were actually marriage markets. This is what he wrote about them:
"In every village once a year all the girls of marriageable age used to be collected together in one place, while the men stood round them in a circle; an auctioneer then called each one in turn to stand up and offered her for sale, beginning with the best-looking and going on to the second best as soon as the first had been sold for a good price. Marriage was the object of the transaction. The rich men who wanted wives bid against each other for the prettiest girls, while the humbler folk, who had no use for good looks in a wife, were actually paid to take the ugly ones, for when the auctioneer had got through all the pretty girls he would call upon the plainest, or even perhaps a crippled one, to stand up, and then ask her who was willing to take the least money to marry her - and she was offered to whoever accepted the smallest sum. The money came from the sale of the beauties, who in this way provided dowries for their ugly or misshapen sisters. It was illegal for a man to marry his daughter to anyone he happened to fancy, and no one could take home a girl he had bought without first finding a backer to guarantee his intention of marrying her. In cases of disagreement between husband and wife the law allowed the return of the purchase money. Anyone who wished could come even from a different village to buy a wife."
Herodotus then laments how this "admirable practice" has since fallen into disuse in favour of prostitution.
Why is this balloon talking about auctions?
There actually isnt a "Nobel Prize for economics", Alfred Nobel rightfully only wanted real science to get his prize. The Prize for economics in memory of Alfred Nobel is something economists came up with to legitimize their mostly whacko theories.
I was about to comment this
We're missing information. By the video, the $8k bid strategy still works because you didn't mention how the $8k doesn't have to be outbid during the auction. The price of the item raises and your bid is used up to keep you in the lead. So if you bid $8k, the item can jump to $1200, but you'll stay the highest bid until all $8k is used up. So it's less of "you pay the second highest bid" and more that the item price and bid are two independent numbers.
Well, if you value the product at 8k then of course the 8k method is going to work. If you value the item at $550 but bet 8k just to get the item then most likely you are overpaying.
The Auction I join is similar. I can bid up the old fashioned way, or enter a Maximum bid. Say I put in a maximum bid of $300, and the other bidder stopped at $160. My auto bid would then win me the item at $170 as that is the next bid increment.
Most of the time, I am outbid. However sometimes, they have an item the bidders are not looking for, or it is poorly attended. At those I pick up some great deals. For example, bought a pallet of PC's at a government surplus auction and averaged $25 each for them. Had a heyday on CL selling them from $100 to $200 each depending on memory and processor. Last week got a dozen LCD monitors for $ 10 each. Selling them for $20 to $50 each depending on the model and screen size. Sold 5 of them as a batch today. Love a good government surplus auction. Picked up my 4KW diesel generator for under a grand. Nice buy.
I am watching this again as your videos are always interesting and entertaining.
You open envelopes like a psychopath though!
Good primer on Vickrey's auction proposals.
2:16 "He said it! He said the funny words!" XD
Amazing vid!
There's another weird type of auction and most players don't even realize it works this way...
In City of Heroes they have a highest bidder/lowest seller auction. When you go to sell an item you set the lowest amount of money you're willing to sell the item for. However because of the way the auction system works the person who bids the highest on an item will always buy from the person who sold for the lowest price. Because of this the same item can be posted for 9 influence/infamy (The currency of the game) and 1,000,000,000 inf. While you can't get a bid lower than your sale price you also will be unlikely to sell an idem at all if you set the price high and if it does sell it won't be for any more than what you actually set the price at. Because the highest bidder always buys from the lowest seller, items sold at 9 inf will actually sell much higher, the highest price possible that anyone is willing to pay for that idea. By selling high you might be low balling yourself, not getting the best value for the item you're trying to sell and may not sell at all if your set the price too high that no one is paying. But by setting the Price low, at 9 inf you're guaranteeing that you will always make a profit no matter what the item actually sells for because you're guaranteed to get the highest bid on that item.
The reason you need to sell for 9 instead of 1 by the way is that the Auction House itself charges a minimum fee of 5 inf. If you sell an item for less than that and the highest bid at the time is also under that price you risk spending more money than what you would Earn. So 9 inf is the lowest price you can sell and still make some kind of a profit even if the bids are low.
As far as I know this kind of bidding only exists in that game and even though the develops said that's how the auction house works I've found that most people never read that and just assumed when they saw "Auction House" that it worked like a normal auction... it doesn't. I got rich in the game selling items for 9 inf. cause most people sell high I always get the highest bid available at any given time. I've gotten anywhere from 110 to 50,000 on items I only posted for 9 inf and if I actually set the price at 110 to 50,000 they'd likely never sell at all.
Some people actually set their sales price based on the highest price sold in the past and never sell anything unless the prices get inflated... which they fluctuate daily but it can take weeks to sell anything that way.
Kevin: “What are auctions?”
UA-cam: An ad for the Chevy Silverado
Let's just appreciate the phenomenal background music for a bit.
This makes me wish I can put my truck, which has been on marketplace for months, on a Vickery bidding system.
One thing, many people do not bid honestly on ebay. Sure the system used is honest in theory, but often someone will bid, are beaten by a pro gamer strategy, then wait until the auction is about to end, and then play their honest hand. When it's sealed envelopes, you go as high as you think its worth because that's the only way to be sure. But on ebay, as long as the clock is running, opponents have a chance to perhaps, bend a little further and pay more than what they honestly thought it was worth. This is compounded by the whole "if someone else thinks its worth that... maybe it is" train of thought. All I got to say is, Im glad ebay doesn't extend the clock when a bid comes in like Yahoo auctions did. ^_-
You missed one type of auctioning. The one where you pay to place a bid (non-refundable) and the item increases in price (pennies or dollars) as you place bids.
Hm. To my memory there were some who had purposely outbid everyone on stuff from these auctioning sites and then just canceled their thing.
Adding features on top of things that work may break stuff.
Hahahahahaha we took something similar this semester in my business school. Sealed second place auction is good to gauge someones willingness to pay!
I’ve had the PS5 and all the accessories since release day bc I preordered it back in May