ebay	Feb 7 04:39 UTC 2000

The culture and strategy and ebay and other online auctions.

response 2 of 43:

Feb 7 05:32 UTC 2000

Just to be a wet blanket:  did you see the news reports of the local boys 
(they weren't, mind you) who used ebay to fence goods stolen from local
stores?  I can't help but wonder how much of the stuff offered has a similar
provenance.

A camera that is no longer available at retail *probably* is less likely
to be stolen goods.

response 4 of 43:

Feb 7 17:50 UTC 2000

I have bought hundreds of books through Ebay.  Given the relatively low
demand for the kinds of items I'm buying (books with data that would be
useful for my web site), and given also my unwillingness to pay high
prices or get into bidding wars, waiting 'til the last minute would be
silly and self-defeating. 

I focus my attention primarily on useful books which have low opening
prices, no reserve, and no bidders.  I am almost never interested in
paying more than about $6 for a book including shipping (these are books
which can rarely be found in used book stores for less than $10 or $20).
If the item description doesn't mention shipping at Book Rate, I write to
the seller to ask if it's available.  Book Rate is a subsidized postal
rate for shipping books -- slow but cheap.  The 85 cents USPS insurance is
an extremely bad deal on a $3 or $5 item given the 1/3000 risk of loss, so
I always reject insurance.

If someone else bids on an item before I do, it is usually pointless for
me to bid.  If the minimum/opening bid is extremely low, sometimes I'll
try a bid, and usually discover that their maximum bid is more than I'm
interested in paying for an item; in other words, they automatically
re-overbid me.  All I've accomplished is increasing their price, and
possibly alienating them.  Therefore, if it's a buyer who I know to have
similar tastes, I have all the more reason not to want to bid against
them, since I don't want them to retaliate by bidding against me.

Undoubtedly, others who come across items where I am the first and only
bidder have the same calculus, and are discouraged from bidding.

Therefore, it is in my interest to find the items as EARLY as possible and
stake my claim by bidding on them.  Waiting 'til the last minute only
gives others a shot.

Obviously someone who wants to pay more than me can then overbid me, and
this happens about a third of the time.  That's okay (and my Ebay
"AboutMe" page promises that I will never come back and manually bid up
the price after being outbid).  The same book -- or a similar book with
much of the same data -- will be available later at a more reasonable
price.  Ebay rewards patience.

response 6 of 43:

Feb 7 19:39 UTC 2000

I don't believe there is any book on Earth of which I simply must have a
specific copy.

One relative advantage I have over other collectors is that condition
makes little difference to me, as long as all the information is there.

response 8 of 43:

Feb 7 21:51 UTC 2000

I don't bother with bidding at the last moment.  I set my proxy bid at the
most I'm willing to pay, and don't touch it after that.  If I get outbid,
the item went for more than I felt it was worth to me anyway.

A lot of people bid in round numbers, so I suspect the idea of bids like
$50.37 is to edge out everyone who bids $50 as their maximum.  Some people
will also bid repeatedly near the end of an auction, in small increments,
trying to find the other bidders' maximum price and exceed it by as little
as possible.  There are always ways to work any system, I suppose.

response 10 of 43:

Feb 7 22:42 UTC 2000

Just recently, I bid on a book with a $1 minimum.  My maximum/proxy bid
was higher, of course.  Someone bid against me without exceeding my max,
so I ended up paying $2.35 for it.  But that's a rare case.  Almost
always, I either end up paying the minimum (even if it's as low as 25
cents), or a competing bidder takes it away from me completely.

The competing bidder usually shows up, if at all, at the very end of the
auction, and gets the item for my maximum plus one increment.  Therefore,
either I get the item for cheap, or I in effect set the price at which it
sells.

This makes for a tricky decision as to where to set the maximum.  A high
maximum makes it more likely that I'll get the book, or else it "punishes"
the competing bidder for bidding against me by making them pay a higher
price.  On the other hand, a high maximum might be bid against without
being exceeded by the other bidder, resulting in a higher acquisition cost
to me.  And if a particular book sells for a high price, it helps build
the unhelpful-to-me notion that these books are worth a lot of money,
and might cause sellers to raise the bid minimums.

Even if a book is special enough that I might pay $10 for it in a used
book store, I would be reluctant to set my maximum that high, even
discounting for the cost of shipping and the 33 cents to mail the check. 

So I generally set my maximum for somewhat LESS than the book is "worth"
to me, because in the long run I can buy more books by being very
conservative and focusing on the best prices.

When I was still quite new to Ebay, I saw a book I wanted, offered for a
minimum bid of $6, which struck me as cheap.  I hastened to offer a bid. 
Very soon afterward, I found the same book (identical in every way) 
offered by a different seller for $1.  Oh well, I said.  Then somebody
overbid me on the $6 book!  I bid on the $1 copy and got it for the
minimum.

response 12 of 43:

Feb 8 22:49 UTC 2000

        Instead of the proxy re-uping the bid very soon after being 
out bid, it seems like i would want to wait (total minutes left in
auction / some constant).  Why let two bots battle when you don't
even get to see the Rock'm Sock'm fight?

response 14 of 43:

Feb 9 12:01 UTC 2000

Just heard on NPR that it was a vandal that took ebay down.  Also took down
amazon.com, buy.com and a few other big sites.  It has gotten bad enough that
the FBI has become involved with the investigation.

response 16 of 43:

Feb 10 14:15 UTC 2000

More cybervandalism reported today.  Speculation from cyber-paranoids
that it's the NSA covertly making the case for 'Net surveillance.
I *hope* they're wrong about that.

response 18 of 43:

Feb 10 15:09 UTC 2000

I had been watching an item I sought (obsolete software...) and planned to
just bid on it at the last moment if the price was still low. Then I
forgot about it...and 'woke up' when it was just four minutes to the end
of the auction. I managed to connect, log on, put in a bid above the
current bid level - get outbid - put in another bid (at my limit), and
won. This meant that someone else (or more than one other) was also
bidding at the last minute (literaly). I expect that if we had tried to be
the high bidder during the week before, it would have been a game of
"chicken". As it was, it was a quick game of "parry and thrust".

The whole web (everything I tried to connect to) Tuesday night was
bogged down. Would these attacks on just a few big sites cause the
whole web to slow down? 

response 20 of 43:

Feb 10 18:52 UTC 2000

        You shouldn't be, really.  Of the modern breed of hacker, most of them
fall into the category of those who get their information from people who
actively seek out security exploits.  Those people also generally work on a
patch, or at least contact those who are beholden to work on a patch, for the
exploit, at the same time they release the information about the
vulnerability.

        Patches generally follow for responsive software vendors within a week
or so, within days for popular open-source software like Linux.  And generally
they're free.

response 22 of 43:

Feb 10 23:12 UTC 2000

        I believe that's the definition of unresponsive.  I'm generalizing a
bit - occasionally someone will post to Bugtraq in frustration after months
of trying to explain a security hole to the vendor, and recieving no response,
and occasionally a bug will be completely covered up.  But it's a common
pattern for non-Microsoft software.

response 24 of 43:

Feb 11 16:08 UTC 2000

        Never assume a consipracy when simple incompetence will explain it.
I've had to testify before about corporations that've gone so far as to file
with the FBI before admitting their hacker was a typo by an employee they
didn't wish to lose.