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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1398869, member: 27832&quot;]That&#039;s perfectly rational, but eBay bidders are not.</p><p><br /></p><p>Suppose an item has been getting between $700 and $900 on eBay. You&#039;d be willing to sell yours for $800, but no less, and you&#039;re hoping for more. (Ignore fees for the moment.)</p><p><br /></p><p>If you list it as an $800 BIN, you&#039;ve got a chance of getting a buyer, but you won&#039;t get more than $800. And there will be quite a lot of people who don&#039;t even look at your auction, because they see a number of other auctions where the item is going for less, and they&#039;re hoping they can get it for less themselves.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you list it with an $800 starting bid, it may get bid higher. But your odds of a sale are actually even <i>less</i> than with BIN, because not only will you miss those who zero in on the lower-priced auctions, you&#039;ll miss those who would bid $800 if they could get instant gratification.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you list it with a 99-cent starting bid and an $800 reserve, you&#039;re almost guaranteed to get <i>some</i> bidders. There will be a few who refuse to bid on an auction with a reserve. But there&#039;ll be a lot more who will at least <i>look</i> at your auction because of its low price. Some of those will put in a lowish bid just in case your reserve turns out to be low. Some others will see that your auction has multiple bids, and decide that if others have found it interesting, they might, too. And if you change your mind about your lower limit, you have the option of accepting the high bid, even if it didn&#039;t meet your reserve. (After all, <i>sellers</i> aren&#039;t always perfectly rational, either.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Your very <i>best</i> chance of getting a successful auction with a high closing bid is to start at 99 cents with no reserve. But, of course, that also exposes you to the risk that you&#039;ll get less than the $800 you wanted.</p><p><br /></p><p>Your second-best bid may be to set an $810 BIN and an $800 reserve (or something similar). At that point, you&#039;re losing those who reject reserve auctions, but retaining those who are looking for a BIN. It&#039;s hard to tell which group is larger, so it&#039;s hard to tell whether this is really a winning strategy.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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