eBay bidding - Irregularity?
 

I was bidding on this 1978 sheet - a bit beat up, but good enough for my needs (have 4, need 2).

Check out the bidding history - I bid $150, then someone else bid $150 and won it. Even if his high-bid was greater than $150, it would have to have sold for at least $151 or something right?

I've never seen something like this, so I'm wondering whether anyone can help explain what may have happened.

https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/22...p2047675.l2565

He bid 21 seconds before you

Argh!! The bids aren't listed chronologically!

Then when he saw his bid was maxed by yours, he bid again.

Sadly, it’s simply the eBay rule around minimum bid increments, and who wins if you both bid the same amount (spoiler alert: the first bidder wins). I assume that you were probably using a sniping service with multiple servers, like Gixen, which is why you have two bids at the same time for the same amount.

I never bid in round prices. For example, I would have bid $150.11.

The only problem is that the bid increment at this level is $2.50, so you would have still lost if your bid came in after the $150.00 bid. You would need to bid at least $152.50 to have won.

I do find myself sometimes fretting over this bid increment rule, where I’ll go to $155, and then I’ll worry that someone else is doing the same thing, so I’ll go a little higher, and then higher still. Next thing you know, I’m up around $185!

If I'm looking at the bids right, since the OP initially bid $130.00 (9:06:18) the max bid would have shown as $132.50 when he was outbid (9:08:30) so he would have seen a next bid of $135.00 as the minimum required amount (since the max bid of $150.00 by the other bidder wouldn't have been seen). In that case, a bid of $150.11 (at 9:08:51) would have made him the high bidder until the other bidder placed another bid at 9:14:06.

Must be we’re reading it differently.

I’m seeing that both bidders bid $150.00 at the last minute. The losing bidder (1678) bid twice at $150.00, but only after the winning bidder (1436) had already bid $150.00.

If I remember correctly, when there are interim bids, they don’t actually show up in the detail, which may be why it seems like some of the detail gets skipped. Ultimately, the last bid from each bidder are the only ones that matter here.

If you choose the 'Show automatic bids' option, it's a little clearer what is going on. You can see there is a bid of $132.50 because that's all that was needed to beat the high bid at the time which was $130.00, but the actual high bid made by the winning bidder was really $150.00. When the OP bid again (since he was no longer winning), he would have seen the high bid as $132.50 (since the max bid is not shown) so would have only had to bid $135.00 even though that would also have been beaten by an automatic bid. Since he bid $150.00, the 2 bids were tied so the first one to bid that amount was still the high bidder. Then, the winning bidder made another bid which shows as $150.00 (since he was still high bidder, he didn't need to raise the high bid) but would have really been higher if someone else had bid again.

Interesting! Thanks for walking through that detail. Always exciting to better understand the process.

Nicely explained, Jay. Did you have a career in teaching?

Never was a teacher but I did do a lot of tutoring and also application training when working in IT.

“But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.” :D