Okay, so I'm not the most seasoned internet bidder. But I have been frequenting ebay. I'm looking for a keyboard, among other things I like to watch. Guess I'm mostly an ebay voyeur. Anyway, I've seen things sell for a pretty good deal and some things sell for not such a great deal. The FP bought his Fender Jaguar guitar for like $350 or $400, which is a really good deal. He won it on a Sunday the day after 4th of July.
Holidays and days after holidays are good days for ending auctions, especially if it's a weekend. Less people are on the computer because they're out doing real shit. Of course, now, everyone has smartphones and ipads and tablets, and there's wifi everywhere, so maybe it's not quite so easy to win an auction, but it's better on a weekend holiday than on a weekday. All you people who sit at a computer all day for a living get to pop in and out of facebook and craigslist and twitter and ebay. I get to right now because I'm unemployed, and all I do all day is sit in front of the computer, but I don't get the luxury of getting paid for it.
Anyway, I had been watching this keyboard - a Clavia Nord Lead 2X. It started off at 0 or $1.00, which is unusual. They usually start at $300 or more, with the reserve being maybe $450 or $500. So, I was excited to see where this one ended up, on the slight off chance hope it would stay low. So, it was listed for 10 days, which is long. The first couple of days, it didn't get past around $30. Then the next day it shot up to $100. It stayed around $102 for another day or two, then it shot up to $300. Now it's at $455 and there are still 2 days left. If no one else were to bid, it would still be a great deal. But that's not going to happen.
So, I guess, here's my strategy, or rather, my plea. Don't do the automatic bidding. Because you can raise the bid from $100 to $300 in one bid. And also, don't even bid until it's getting close to the end. Think about it. If only two people bid on an item in the beginning of an auction, and no one bid on it until the very end, whoever wins would always end the auction with a sweet deal. And also, it would force sellers to just start around the reserve. It's a little annoying when an item is listed as "reserve not met" and then the seller isn't able to move the product by the end of the auction. Then they have to repost it anyway.
I briefly looked at those newer sites like beezid, and those are annoying. When the bidding is counting down, the clock resets every time someone bids. So, it looks like you have to have hours after the official end of the auction free in order to get a fighting chance. Anyway, I like ebay. I'm like an old fogey used to the old sites. When a site like yahoo mail has a new improved browser or upgrades, I usually try to put off changing over as long as possible. I mean, look at my_space. It was doing great, pretty much running friendster into the grave, and then the spam came. And more spam. And right around that time facebook appeared. I really preferred myspace over facebook because it was more music-centric. The music player was right there on the page. But, everyone migrated to facebook. So, myspace tried to look and act more like facebook, but it was confusing and ugly, and really it was just too late. If myspace had squarshed the spam right away and not given so many options for skins that might take several minutes to load on old slow computers, maybe myspace would have thrived, rather than just surviving in a hospital bed in a coma. Of course, there is Justin Timberlake, who is supposed to perform CPR on the site. But I don't think CPR works on coma patients, does it? Well, we'll see. I think my gage of how successful myspace gets will be if it appears on the "Popular" drop down list on my Safari browser. If that happens, do I have to send Justin Timberlake a thank you card or flowers or a present? Or can I just let it go since he was just doing his job?
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