Fleabay

I have occasionally bought items off Ebay when I haven’t been able to find them elsewhere. They are great for second hand car parts or spares for discontinued domestic appliances but for the most part I have only ever purchased things at a fixed price.

Last weekend my son asked if he could buy a set of Manga comic books that were for sale there. They were for sale by auction and this was a new one for me. They appeared to be very cheap and I agreed to stick a bid in for them. I then discovered the wonders of automatic bids as successive bids were automatically out-bid until I finally had a bid accepted at a “not quite as cheap as I had first thought” price.

I thought that was it until just 5 minutes from the end of the auction I was outbid again. I tried a few more bids until I was once again the highest bidder at a “reasonable but not quite the bargain I had hoped” price. With 10 seconds remaining I was about to text my son to tell him that a load of back-to-front Japanese comic books were on their way when I was outbid for a final time with no chance to rebid. Bastard!

It was at this point that found out how the automatic bidding process works – place a bid that is the maximum that one is prepared to pay and the system will bid for you – up to that maximum. I had wanted some new Hi-Fi equipment and thought I would give this a try, placing a maximum bid against some floor-standing speakers. This seemed to work at first as one or two bids pushed the value higher but without outbidding me. That was until the last hour of the auction when I was outbid. I didn’t mind as it was more than I was prepared to pay but, surprisingly, two other bidders repeatedly outbid each other until the price for this second-hand item was in excess of what a new one would have cost from a reputable high street Hi-Fi outlet. Very strange.

Some people clearly enjoy auctions (and I have to admit that attending a motor auction was hugely entertaining) but actually participating in them is rather stressful and doesn’t give me any sort of satisfaction. What this actually tells me is something I already know. I don’t like gambling. For some people a trip to the bookies, a day at the races or a game of bingo at the social club is a fine form of entertainment and the mind-games of Fleabay fall into this. But for me, I would rather know where I stand with things – back to the fixed price listings, then.