Matthew Botos

I just sold my “old” Tivo Series 2 on eBay and got a chance to observe how the site and bidders are working these days. I’ve been a member since 1999, and both the site and the bidders have become much more sophisticated. I went the traditional and most popular 7-day format and here’s how the timeline played out:

• First few days: no bids, a few people added it as a “watched item” for later bidding
• Middle days: a few low bids, more watchers
• Final days: bids really began to climb as the number of watchers grows to over 20

It ultimately went to a 400-level eBayer who bid in the last few hours after 30 other bids. As late stage “sniping” has become an established technique for successful bidding, this came as no surprise. More surprising was how much of the activity and interest was concentrated in the last few days.

In addition to increased bidder sophistication, eBay is now so populated with items that your auction won’t hit the first few pages of search results until close to the end. (I recently read that eBay has a 2 petabyte database with 2x the information of the Library of Congress.) Since the early days of the auction mostly serve to attract interest, I think a shorter 3-5 day auction wouldn’t reduce the selling price.

Another interesting comparison was a parallel auction for the same Tivo with a reserve price. As a buyer, a reserve has always been a deterrent since you don’t know if your bid will actually break that invisible threshold set by the seller. This seller did mention the reserve was $150, a reasonable amount given that the same new box and service package was $200. In fact, it was what I was hoping to get for mine. In the end, however, his only reached $51 with 12 bids, versus $157 with 31 bids in my auction, confirming my hunch.