1. Messages
  2. what am I missing here??

Re: what am I missing here??

Tim O'Connor
 

Freight car related: I remember when (name hidden) was bidding on a
huge 1960's B&W photo collection of freight cars around the Chicago
area. He would just plant a high proxy bid on about 90% of the images.
If it was something I wished I could afford, I'd put in a bid that I
learned was less than his max bid (which I never learned) -- I know
it was spiteful, but I hate it sometimes when someone is using their
abundant funds to grab up everything even though I can't imagine he
needed so many of those images (thousands of them). Sometimes I bid
on stuff I didn't care about, if no one else besides () was bidding.
All of the images were 35mm negatives.

Tim O'Connor

Maybe several bidders had a large proxy bid in an effort to win. Then
the bids got high enough for the max bids to kick in?
One did. He got pushed up by a bidder who came in in the last hour and placed a
series of ever-increasing bids before giving up. Who knows what the winner's upper
limit was. It does seem questionable, even if he has the resources.

In the early days of eBay I won a few HO pieces from a Lionel collector in
Thousand Oaks. He told me that when he saw a Lionel item he wanted, regardless
of value, he placed a $1000 proxy bid. Claimed that was a cost-effective tactic -
you might pay too much for a few items, but once the other bidders learn you
won't be outbid, they stop competing with you and you get things for a lot less.
But with eBay bidders having their identities concealed these days, it seems a
foolish tactic.

Tom Madden, who didn't bid on that item.
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