I made a feeble effort to find this on e-bay but wasn't sure where to look so I will ask the experts here. I wanted to buy a coin that was offered as a BIN for $65 but had an auction price starting at $0.99. I bid a nominal $15 and when the auction was closing I was outbid by someone for $15.50. With scant seconds to go, I upped my bid to $30 and saw it go up to $20.50 and then the auction ended saying the reserve price wasn't met. Whaaaaa? First, was the reserve above $30 so it didn't do any good to go above $20.50? I missed the coin, how does this work? Would I have a chance at it for less than $65? How would I know? Do I have any options?
I think the reserve is the ending bid amount. Not max bids that aren't reached. You could always ask the seller what his reserve is.
The seller can set a reserve, that works just like a normal reserve auction, and a buy it now price. I believe once the reserve is met, the buy it now option disappears. In your case, yes, the reserve was above your $30 bid. It worked just like any other reserve auction. If the reserve is not met, you don't get the coin. When you bid, it should tell you something like you are the high bidder, but the reserve is still not met. You could have kept upping your bid little by little until you find the reserve.
Yes, that's a problem I've seen with eBay. If the other bidder's max was 20, it only goes up by 1 increment (to 20.50) even if you were willing to go to 30 and the reserve was 25.
I honestly mean no offense, but I am always surprised by how little people understand how bidding on ebay works. I had a bidder basically accuse me of shill bidding the other day because the auction they were bidding on was going for more than my other auctions. I don't think he believed me when I said there was be someone else wanting that coin too, so he deleted his bid. Dropped the auction by about $150. Doh!
No, if you were willing to go to $30, (and actually BID $30), then ebay automatically raises the bid to meet the reserve. http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/reserve-price.html
If you see a coin offered with a Buy It Now price on it, it's probably a bad assumption that it can be bought for less than half that figure. My guess is that if you had bid $50, you might have come away with the coin, but it doesn't surprise me at all that $30 didn't surpass the seller's reserve.
I know that's how it's supposed to work, but I've seen it go the way I described it... Must be a glitch...
