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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 4824813, member: 19463&quot;]I recall that type auction and believe it really does separate the serious from the players as well as any.&nbsp; The other form of auction I miss from the old days was what I thought was called &#039;Dutch&#039; rather than the one described above.&nbsp; In it the offering was a quantity of supposedly like items.&nbsp; We bid an amount and how many we would take at that price.&nbsp; If you bid that you would take them all, you paid the amount you bid.&nbsp; If, for example, the seller had 35 random denarii and you only wanted a few at random, you could bid more than they were worth and the price would be set for everyone by the amount bid by the 35th highest number.&nbsp; I participated in one of these in 1999 on eBay where I saw a real sleeper for which I would easily pay $350 in a junk group of 35 coins.&nbsp; I bid $50 on (up to) 34 coins.&nbsp; The highest other bid was $10 for an unknown number (lets guess 10).&nbsp; Because of my unreasonably high bid, I won 34 and the other bidder got only one but we both paid his bid of $10 per coin.&nbsp; I was risking having to pay $1700 for the 34 (if the second bidder also offered $50) but I was hopeful that the bids would be lower and ended up getting my coin and 33 other denarii for $340.&nbsp; It would have been dishonest to ask the seller to sell that one separately after the listing was posted.</p><p><br /></p><p>I was sweating bullets hoping that the one coin I would not get would not be the one I wanted when I got a note from the seller saying the winner of #35 really, really wanted the Elagabalus in the group but the rules required him to draw randomly.&nbsp; He was an honest man!&nbsp; I told him to let the other bidder have the Elagabalus trying not to act too elated that I really was going to get my coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>I ended up putting 6 other coins from the group in my collection and sold/gave away the&nbsp; others for much less than the $10 each I had paid.&nbsp; Later, I sold one of the six&nbsp; (not pictured here) but still have the coin I wanted so badly and five of the &#039;also ran&#039; group.&nbsp; The 6 coins below cost me $340 minus about $100 I got for the 28 others.&nbsp; Remember many of them were absolute trash by then current standards.&nbsp; $240/6=$40 and none of the others below were worth $40 back then or now.&nbsp; Only people who have paid attention to my past posts would be able to pick out the one I risked $1700 to get.&nbsp; That is what I call a Dutch Auction.&nbsp; I was able to find several online explanations of the term agreeing with mine and others with the reverse style auction as described by <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/members/ocatarinetabellatchitchix.99554/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/members/ocatarinetabellatchitchix.99554/">Ocatarinetabellatchitchix</a>.&nbsp; ebay stopped this sort of sale years ago because it really required all participants to be honest and follow the rules.&nbsp; Had I not received the coin I wanted, I would not have been entitled to returning the coins.&nbsp; These problems led to the end of the sales.</p><p>&nbsp;[ATTACH=full]1167685[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1167679[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1167680[/ATTACH]&nbsp; [ATTACH=full]1167684[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1167682[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1167683[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Today, the closest thing we have are &#039;Buy or Bid&#039; sales but, in these, the seller does not agree to sell the item even if it goes down to $1.&nbsp; We see many so called auctions that are really dream listings with ridiculous reserves.&nbsp; The good old days are gone.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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