63 Country Squire..Nice

Wow. At $32k with 13 minutes left.

 

Looks like the 32k "knockout punch" bid takes it!

 

Sold for $32K!

I'll bet the seller is pleased! (Of course, we'll have to see if the buyer follows through and buys. If not, wait for a re-list.)

 

So what do I win? I was only $500 off?

 

Huh??

 

I wonder about someone jumping in with that kind of money. But....I've seen it before. I will be interested to see if this car ever comes back....the seller's name is countrygents just for the record.

 

Looking at the eBay bid history, it is kind of confusing. It jumped from $17,100 at May-02-12 06:44:25 PDT, to $32,000 at May-02-12 15:37:43 PDT.

I know that the proxy bid you place, i.e. the total amount you're willing to bid, doesn't show in the bid history until someone else places a higher bid. If that was the case, though, I would think there would have been someone out there with a closer runner-up bid to the $32,000 winning bid.

That makes me wonder if the winning bidder placed a higher proxy bid, let's say $40K, and the amount eBay applied was just up to the reserve amount, in this case $32K. Since no one else placed a proxy bid close to that amount, the fellow placing the higher proxy bid won it for the reserve amount.

That might explain why the bid history only shows up to $17,100 for the second place bid. If my guess is correct, that means the seller had a really high reserve, if that is what triggered the $32K winning bid.

Does anyone else know if that is how eBay works? I'm just guessing here.

 

I think your guess is a good one. Providing that the last bid wasn't a deadbeat bid.

 

We shall see if this one comes up again soon. If it does, and it's still in SoCal, it's a good bet that the $32k was a dummy bid by the seller.

 

It's not unusual for a curious eBay bidder to make a high bid he has no intention of honoring, just to trigger the "reserve met" signal and find out what the reserve is. Usually though when this happens, it is done earlier in the auction, so that the fake bidder has a chance to retract his bid. That didn't happen in this case.

If this was a shill bid, made by the seller under a different ID or by a friend, I'm not sure what would be the point. Normally shill bids are also made earlier in an auction, in order to whip up a fake feeding frenzy to attract other, real, bidders. The $32K bid was made a half-hour before the auction ended.

If the seller made the fake winning bid in order to tell others what his reserve amount was, there are easier ways. Most sellers, if they want potential bidders to know the reserve amount, simply list it in their auction description.

eBay only shows you limited history on bidders, when looking at the bidding history. It used to be you could see their complete history. So it is hard to say if the winning bidder is legit or not. I guess we will know if the wagon is relisted.

 

I sold a car last month through eBay and about an hour before the auction ended the bidding jumped from $11K to exactly my reserve of $14.4K, all from one bidder with no feedback. It felt fishy so I emailed the bidder and the response came back saying he was an Oceanographer, on assignment , buying the car for his dad, yada, yada, yada. Everything was misspelled and he refused my requests for a phone number. I cancelled his bid and gave the next highest bidder with an update. The bid history on my car was exactly like the history on this wagon. The strangest part was how this scammer got to my reserve without it showing in the bid history. Ultimately the car sold but it was frustrating dealing with. Oh, and on a side note, each week since than, I get an email to my home account with a fake eBay login screen with the intent of highjacking my eBay account. Somehow my email address was obtained even though it was never listed in the auction.

Chris

 

As I understand it....let's say your reserve is $10k and there are no bids on the car. If I bid $20K, my bid will stop at the reserve price of $10k until someone surpasses the reserve then my bid, by proxy, will continue up to surpass that bidders bid. My bid will still be good all the way to $20K. If someone bids $21K then HIS bid takes over having surpassed mine.
Anyway...I have lost all faith in eBay anymore. It used to be fun but the new rules and the hiding of things and failure to step in to protect a seller from crooks and visa versa, etc, etc has made it a haven for shady deals. I'm not saying that there are not honest people dealing there, but, it is hardly worth the effort to sift through and find the ones that are honest. There was a time that it was fun dealing on eBay. It just isn't fun anymore.

 

If I had a special interest vehicle (or any vehicle for that matter), I can't think of any instance where I wouldn't try Craig's List, Auto Trader or Classic Auto Trader first. There's enough search engines out there that even if the buyers aren't local, they will still find you if they want the unit. Allows the seller to dictate the terms of contact and sale a lot better.

 

I don't trust this new fangled internet thingy!

 

That is absolutely correct - so either someone wanted this car really, really bad and bid what they thought was an unbeatable price and took it all the way up to the reserve, or else there's some sort of scam going on here.

If the buyer pays up then the seller is going to be very, very pleased ... if not it's just going to be a headache for the seller, what with re-listing and getting eBay to cancel the seller's fees.