Yahoo Auctions
Yahoo Auctions is the Japanese Ebay. The language barrier makes it Japanese-only, if you don't count the few foreigners. There are effectively no competitors in bidding from the rest of the world and the prices are relatively low.
Sometimes you can observe really strange behavior in these auctions. Is it the same on Ebay? I don't know.
The starting price determines the number of bidders: The fountain pen Pilot Custom 845 is a pen many people want to buy because it is partly coated in urushi (Japanese lacquer). At one day, two pens were available at the same time in Yahoo Auctions. One auction with a starting price of 20000 Yen and the other with a starting price of 100 Yen. The 20000 Yen auction attracted two bidders and finally I could buy it for 23000 Yen. The 100 Yen auction attracted about 30 bidders and finally was sold for 24500 Yen. And this happens often. So many times I saw an auction where apparently nobody was interested. When the seller than in one of the next rounds drastically reduced the price, bidders were flogging onto the auction and often the object was sold at a higher price than the starting price of the first round with nobody bidding.
Better not to participate in a bidding war: Sometimes, the objects are sold for outrageous prices - even reaching several times the price of a new one. Usually this happens after two bidders got into a bidding war. Just recently a bidder paid 60000 Yen for a pen worth 4000 Yen - a Parker 75 gold-filled from the 1970s. This pen is not rare at all, nothing special.
What drives these people to show such an illogical behavior. The fighting, the feeling good after winning a fight? Guess, when they calmed down, they regret it. The loser is the actual winner.
(LINK to the page of the Pilot Custom 845 - LINK to Pilot fountain pen HP).
Sometimes you can observe really strange behavior in these auctions. Is it the same on Ebay? I don't know.
The starting price determines the number of bidders: The fountain pen Pilot Custom 845 is a pen many people want to buy because it is partly coated in urushi (Japanese lacquer). At one day, two pens were available at the same time in Yahoo Auctions. One auction with a starting price of 20000 Yen and the other with a starting price of 100 Yen. The 20000 Yen auction attracted two bidders and finally I could buy it for 23000 Yen. The 100 Yen auction attracted about 30 bidders and finally was sold for 24500 Yen. And this happens often. So many times I saw an auction where apparently nobody was interested. When the seller than in one of the next rounds drastically reduced the price, bidders were flogging onto the auction and often the object was sold at a higher price than the starting price of the first round with nobody bidding.
Better not to participate in a bidding war: Sometimes, the objects are sold for outrageous prices - even reaching several times the price of a new one. Usually this happens after two bidders got into a bidding war. Just recently a bidder paid 60000 Yen for a pen worth 4000 Yen - a Parker 75 gold-filled from the 1970s. This pen is not rare at all, nothing special.
What drives these people to show such an illogical behavior. The fighting, the feeling good after winning a fight? Guess, when they calmed down, they regret it. The loser is the actual winner.
(LINK to the page of the Pilot Custom 845 - LINK to Pilot fountain pen HP).
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