Skip to main content
Live chat will not be available on Monday, September 7th in observance of Labor day. We will reply to your request as soon as possible.
Help Center Community Shop

GB auction rules

jack london
After years of bidding on GunBroker items, and more years of bidding at farm auctions, I would like to offer a suggestion. The automatic bidding feature is OK for the peculiarities of online auctions, and the 15 minute rule is great. But I have an issue with the automatic bidding for the final bid. In almost every auction the winning bid is computed (I'm not talking about by-it-now 'auctions'). Thus, the seller looses a potentially better sale, and the bidders don't know what the 'true' final bid was. This distorts the market and misleads future buyers/sellers as to market trends. Since online auctions don't provide face-to-face bidding, the seller will never know what the market is for his item. I would like to see the winning bid equal the full bid of the buyer, not the computed bid. Thus, an item would not be a victim of a sniper who bid $500 for a $200 item. Instead, the sniper would have to put up the full $500 of his sniper bid - no $5 increment over a legit $200 bid. There are no unchallenged snipers at farm auctions. Then all the bidders can examine the bid list to see how the true bidding produced the final win.
That's my 2cents worth....
Anybody agree? Any other views?
0

Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • wpageabc
    With one post you want to change the rules?
    0
  • Mark G
    I'm not sure what your argument is. By putting in a MAX BID, it is the Max that I am willing to pay. If another bidder decides to wait until the end of the auction and try to spike a bid, the 15 minute rule kicks in and the system compares his bid to mine. If mine is higher then I'm still high bidder and the sniper has 15 minutes to try again. If his goes over mine then he wins. Gunbroker shows the final sale amount and life continues. Are you suggesting that if I put in a max bid of $500 and nobody else bids higher than $200 that I should have to pay the $500? That's not how it works at live auctions. If I have a number in my head that I am willing to pay and the auction doesn't come close to that I'm not going to tell them that I was willing to go higher so here's the extra money. The proxy bid just makes it easier for the bidder by not having to watch every auction that they are interested in down to the wire.
    0
  • Horse Plains Drifter
    Mark G wrote:
    Are you suggesting that if I put in a max bid of $500 and nobody else bids higher than $200 that I should have to pay the $500?

    Yeah, that's what he's saying.
    0
  • mnrivrat48
    Great idea ! Then the seller should have a secret least amount he will take for the item. Lets say that is $200 he is willing to sell it for. Then the high bidder puts in their proxy bid and it closes for $500 . Now since the seller would have taken $200 , he can then sell it to the highest bidder for $200 instead of the $500 high bid . :D Not sure that is how an auction works.
    0
  • David Nunn
    You may contact Gunbroker Support. There is an option there: "Feature Request."

    Make your suggestion there. There is no guarantee that anyone from the auction site will see this thread, and even if they do, they'll likely ignore it.

    Support is the place to go.
    0

Post is closed for comments.

Recent Activity