eBay Private Auctions (Was: FA: 50 British Farthings . . .)

Message 2 in thread
From: JOPN )
Subject: FA: 50 British Farthings Starting at One USA Cent & Other Fun
Stuff

Newsgroups: rec.collecting.coins
Date: 2003-06-16 09:54:47 PST

(Terry of GBIECoins)

Greetings,

We have a few things running this week on eBay:

http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/gbiecoins/


"Just out of curiosity - why do sellers offer private auctions for items such
as
this. I can see that on high price items which may attract unwanted e-mails,
etc. But otherwise it always seems somewhat sinister (not speaking of you
personally Terrie).
John N"

Hi John,

Actually, I'm glad the question was raised. It made me do a little work (for a
change and do a Google search on Private Auctions & see what folks had to
say about it. Apparently there are more than a few folks with some strong
thoughts on the matter.

See: http://tinyurl.com/gsj4

for search results of "Private Auctions" on the RCC forum -and-

http://tinyurl.com/gsj9

for a 44 message thread having subject line: Benefit of Private Auctions.

Actually, this eBay private auction thing is just something I tried
recently after some back & forths with a seller of higher end world materials
who had mentioned that he only lists by Private Auction to protect the
identities of bidders & winners.

After taking what the other seller had to say to heart, I formed my own
belief that it might be a good way of helping to cut down on Spam going to the
bidders of my auctions. There's been such a flood of Spam over the last 6
months that I stopped sending out a direct mailer in December, just so as not
to be one more piece of mail in someone's email box. I still post to the
public & private groups & clubs. My thinking was that if I started an item at
a very low value, the bidder list could be quite long & there could be those
who might want to harvest from the list or otherwise have access to the bidder
list.

What some sellers do, routinely, is start a value low, then take all of the
bidders email addresses that they can & add them to their direct email list.
That's something I've never done.

The private auctions didn't seem to attract as many bidders as ordinary
course listings, so I am having second thoughts about doing it further.

I think there may be confusion about Private Auctions. Initially, when the
seller I mentioned sent me the result of one of his eBay auction closings and I
had seen that it was a private auction, I was somewhat slighted, thinking that
he didn't invite me to be a bidder. I thought that a Private Auction was an
auction by invitation only & only those invited could bid. Anyway, he
explained it. The item didn't sell and we finally negotiated an arm's length
bargain & sale deal on a Victorian Gibraltar proof coin.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear any further thoughts about Private
Auctions as I haven't listed enough of them to say definitively that I am
getting less bidders or lower closing prices, but it sure seems that way.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely, Terry ~
Nummorum Famulus ~ Coin of the Realm
http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/gbiecoins/
http://members.aol.com/gbiemail/Index.htm
Purveyors of British & Other Quality Coinage