[time-nuts] OT: eBay bidding question

Rex rexa at sonic.net
Thu Apr 26 05:10:36 EDT 2007


I suspect there are lots of eBay bidders here. I'm looking at something
that I don't understand. 

After some discussion here, I was following an auction for an HP 3458A
meter. It is this one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250107015204&rd=1&rd=1

It has gone too high for me, but I was looking at how it got there. If
you click on the bid history, it is (as I look at it now) sitting at
$4000, but there are two bidders listed at $4000.

How did two bidders end up listed for placing the same bid amount
($4000) and Bidder 6 with an earlier date is winning over Bidder 8 with
date 3 days later? (I can see why the earlier one wins, if they both had
the same bid but what kind of sequence could create this list?)

I thought Bidder 7 might have had something to do with it but looking at
the list of bids, Bidder 7 is only down the list before bidder 5. Why
didn't Bidder 6 show up until the end?

As I look at that list of bids -- who, when, how much -- my head hurts
trying to make sense of it. Here's a simple starting question... Why
isn't Bidder 1 the first in the list? If he got bumped from the starting
slot, why? What makes Bidder 1's first bid not worth keeping?

Can any of you Mensa-types explain it? Is the algorithm for these bid
lists explained somewhere in the Ebay maze? I've been puzzled by these
lists before, but this one seems a good example of HUH???

---
The list of bids on this auction could be a moving target, so here's the
bid list I'm looking at (after a lot of work to capture it and make it
look ok)...

	Item title: 		HEWLETT PACKARD HP MULTIMETER 3458A
	Time left: 		1 day, 16 hours 44 minutes 50 seconds

	Only actual bids (not automatic bids generated up to a bidder's
maximum) are shown. Automatic bids may be placed days or hours before a
listing ends. Learn more about bidding
<http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bidding-ov.html>. 	

	*Bidder*    Bid Amount    Date of bid 		
	Bidder 6    US $4,000.00  Apr-22-07 05:14:15
	Bidder 8    US $4,000.00  Apr-25-07 00:49:30 
	Bidder 5    US $3,000.00  Apr-23-07 19:31:08
	Bidder 5    US $2,900.00  Apr-23-07 19:31:00
	Bidder 5    US $2,800.00  Apr-23-07 19:30:50
	Bidder 5    US $2,700.00  Apr-23-07 19:30:42
	Bidder 5    US $2,500.00  Apr-23-07 19:30:32
	Bidder 5    US $2,200.00  Apr-23-07 19:30:25
	Bidder 7    US $2,050.00  Apr-23-07 00:33:36 
	Bidder 5    US $2,000.00  Apr-21-07 21:21:05
	Bidder 3    US $1,250.50  Apr-21-07 17:19:52 
	Bidder 4    US $1,111.00  Apr-21-07 17:38:42 
	Bidder 2    US   $559.00  Apr-21-07 16:39:08 
	Bidder 1    US   $365.00  Apr-20-07 21:33:10 
	Bidder 2    US   $250.00  Apr-21-07 16:38:56 
	
---
Sorry, in advance, for taking us on a tangent. Hope this doesn't get too
out of hand as a thread.




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