Quote: On Nov. 8, the online commerce site Delcampe announced that transactions on the site will become anonymous beginning Dec. 8. This change applies to auctions and fixed price purchases.
Delcampe made the announcement via an email with the subject line "More confidentiality in your transactions!" that was sent to registered Delcampe users.
"Some malicious individuals use the displayed nicknames to contact the seller, buyer or even a bidder by email in an attempt to intercept the payment or the item," Delcampe said in the email.
According to Delcampe, starting Dec. 8, "only the seller, the buyer and the Delcampe team will see the nickname of the buyer of a fixed price item."
"For the other users of the website, the nickname will be replaced by 'buyer,' " Delcampe said.
Delcampe also clarified how the change to anonymity will affect auctions.
Beginning Dec. 8, "the seller will be able to see all the nicknames bidding on an item in his shop," Delcampe said.
"Each bidder will only see their own nickname. Other bidders will see 'bidder 1' 'bidder 2' etc," Delcampe said.
"Members not involved in the auction will only see the seller's nickname. Of course, the Delcampe team will remain vigilant to avoid any misuse of the anonymity of auctions."
Delcampe also revealed in the email that it is introducing what it calls a "last minute extension" feature on auctions.
"In concrete terms, if a bid is placed in the last minute of the auction, the auction will be extended by one minute and so on," Delcampe said.
According to Delcampe, the last-minute extension ensures that "all buyers will have the same chance to win the item they want."
I don't use Delcampe. 1. The "trust" issues are raised here? 2. Sniping is still available? (one still places his/her top bid, and after the 1 minute elapses, wins the bid providing others have not gone higher)
I don't understand how a malicious can contact a buyer from a nickname? Surely when you sign up for an auction service you use a random name of your liking, how can that be traced?
Hi Rod - Not sure what was going on to prompt the changes, but it obviously was not good. As for the "soft close" I see it as an improvement but not exactly reinventing the wheel.
Yes Rog, I see it as improvement, it is a long time coming my dealer has used this regime for 10 years or so.
He offers "sniping" in this fashion, which suits me, as getting up at midnight to attend an auction in the US, and then lose the bid was horrendous.
There is always the nagging feeling that things are suspicious, I guess that is true with all online auctions, often my top snipe bid will win, with the lower bidder just one step below.
That is understandable with any auction lot, but when it happens 3 or 4 bids in a row, your ears prick up.
The reason to persist, was always the satisfaction of getting the lot at my price. I was happy with that.
I lose a huge proportion of my snipe bids, due to the impost I face, with currency exchange, and high ship prices.
I 100% commiserate with you Rod. My beef is when all of my bids are sniped at prices that don't seem genuine because of their high amounts. Always have the feeling that the seller is bidding to protect his "reserve".
Quote: They implemented auto extensions and a year later there was crickets and they shut them down. Sellers and buyers hated it.
Wow. I guess we shall see how Delcampe survives it. I was not aware of that. I wonder why sellers/vendors hated it? I would have assumed they may be getting higher prices.
Quote: Revenue non-equivalence between auctions with soft and hard closing mechanisms: New evidence from Yahoo!
Abstract We use a unique dataset to examine the revenue differences between auctions with a hard-close ending rule versus those with a soft-close ending rule. We find that selling items using the soft-close rule increases the selling price by an amount between $25 and $44 (or 13–20 percent) over the hard-close format. One possible theoretical explanation for these results is that the hard-close ending rule accommodates the practice of sniping, which leads to a lower expected selling price. We find empirically that a lack of experience could help to explain why, in spite of the revenue differences, some sellers select the hard-close ending rule.
Highlights #9658; We use a unique dataset to examine the revenue differences between auctions with a hard-close ending rule versus those with a soft-close ending rule. #9658; We found that selling items using the soft-close rule increases the selling price by an amount between $25 and $44 (or 13–20 percent) over the hard-close format. #9658; One possible theoretical explanation for these results is that the hard-close ending rule accommodates the practice of sniping, which leads to a lower expected selling price. #9658; We find empirically that a lack of experience could help to explain why, in spite of the revenue differences, some sellers select the hard-close ending rule.
Introduction Empirical investigations of online auctions have shown a common pattern of very late bidding. Bidders placing bids just seconds before the auction's close, a practice known as "sniping", is not only a commonplace, but has been made easy through the use of artificial bidding agents.2 Due to network problems, however, bids submitted this late in an auction have a positive probability of not being received. Roth and Ockenfels (2002) conclude that such a scenario of sniping, in which some bids are probabilistically not received, reduces an auction's expected closing price. Other authors have agreed with the Roth and Ockenfels (2002) assertion that sniping can be seen as a form of "implicit collusion" among bidders to lower the seller's expected revenues.3
Online auctions generally have two types of ending rules: hard-close and soft-close. Under a hard-close rule, the auction ends at a fixed and posted time. In a soft-close auction, the auction has a hypothetical posted closing time. A bid placed shortly before this posted closing time extends the auction for an additional period of time. Once extended, the auction is further extended with each additional bid and closes only after a pre-specified amount of time has elapsed without a bid.
This paper fills a gap in the literature by systematically testing if the soft-close ending rule yields higher seller revenues than its hard-close counterpart. We verify below that this is, indeed, the case. While the hard-close ending rule is a potentially valuable feature for bidders, it generates lower expected revenues for the seller than a soft-close ending rule.
We use data collected from Yahoo! Auctions, a site that allowed sellers to choose between soft- and hard-close ending rules, to directly investigate the revenue differences between auction ending rules. Giving sellers the choice of the auction's closing rule is a feature not commonly found on online auction sites. Since Yahoo! closed its online auction site in 2007, our empirical investigation is likely to remain unique for some time to come.4 Specifically, we record all single-item auctions of Apple 60 GB Video iPods that closed in a seven-month period in 2006. We hypothesize that, in reinforcing the incentive to snipe, the hard-close ending rule facilitates implicit bidder collusion and should consequently result in lower expected revenues than the soft-close ending rule.
We find the difference in revenues between soft- and hard-close auctions to be quite large. On average, iPods sold using the soft-close mechanism have selling prices between $25 and $44 (or 13–20 percent) higher than those sold under the hard-close format. Though consistent with the initial hypothesis, the magnitude of this estimate is rather surprising. Because we do not directly test for sniping, this is only one possible explanation for the observed results.
Such large revenue differences between closing formats naturally raises the question of which sellers choose the soft-close ending rule. Given our results, one would expect all Yahoo! sellers to select the soft-close format. Nonetheless, several sellers in our dataset select a hard-close format. One possible explanation is that these sellers are relatively inexperienced and do not realize that the closing format has an effect on expected revenues. In fact, we find that the only variable appearing to affect a seller's probability of choosing the soft-close ending rule is the seller's experience. The hard-close format is the default option when setting up an auction and naïve, inexperienced sellers might not realize that they would benefit from changing it. Our results also raise the question of why a soft-close ending rule is not more common among online auction sites. For example, eBay and many other online auction sites only offer a hard-close ending rule.5
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next section reviews the literature, focusing in particular on auction closing formats and sniping in online auctions. In Section 3, we describe the data and present our empirical analysis and results. Section 4 offers some concluding remarks.
Section snippets Literature review The prevalence of late bidding, seen in a striking number of online auctions, has challenged the predictions of auction theory and been recently examined in the literature from a variety of perspectives. An excellent survey of online auctions, with particular attention paid to late and incremental bidding, can be found in Ockenfels et al. (2006). Bajari and Hortaçsu (2004) provide another very useful survey of the literature concerning online auctions.
Vickrey (1961) shows that it is a dominant
Data analysis Our dataset consists of all single item auctions of new Apple 60 GB Video iPods that closed in the seven month period from December 29, 2005 to July 26, 2006, on the Yahoo! Auctions website. Yahoo! allows the seller to select the type of closing rule used in the auction. This is a unique feature that results in both hard- and soft-close auctions taking place on a single site, which allows for a direct examination of the impact of the closing format on the selling price. In reinforcing the
Conclusion We have presented empirical evidence that online auctions of hard- and soft-close formats are not revenue equivalent. Our unique dataset allows us to isolate the effect of the closing rule on a seller's expected revenues by controlling for much of the variation in other auction and seller characteristics. Apparently, the soft-close format affords the seller a substantial premium in expected revenues.
Is that the same as setting up searches and having ebay send me a notification Rod?
If so, the settings do not hold for me. Ebay has become one of the clunkiest sites I've ever used.
It also comes down to time. I've made zero purchases on Delcampe this year, despite searching regularly through the listings. For my DLR collection the last significant purchase was in 2019.
For my postmarks, I've made 20 significant purchases on ebay this year. 14 of those were from 6 sellers.
Quote: Is that the same as setting up searches and having eBay send me a notification Rod?
Indeed, my description was clunky, sorry.
I make a description in the search bar say "Turkey Turkiye Sc4 1863"
Then go to advanced, and make special restrictions "only in Australia" etc etc "used" or "mint" etc or whatever
Then save as notification search.
I don't get a huge response naturally, but saves a lot of time, surfing
I have found some good buys lately on ebay, things are turning I feel.
Phoenix is definitely the "go to" for your discipline albeit I find the prices too high for most of what I am after Ebay does offer some challenges though.......
Where to start, I guess I will go backwards. Bobby De La Rue, I have been taking a collection out to its limit so it seems as you mention. Yet I started two thread here on SFC (a US JQ-1 and a US Parcel Post group used in Shanghai, China at the US Postal Administration there) with a closing note that it is funny how rarely seen items sometimes just appear, in this case together at the same time from different sellers a thousand miles apart, to close within hours of each other.
In other SCF threads many posters have taken the position on eBay auctions which are run blind (can't see who is bidding against you) with everything set to private are auctions to avoid. It seems the distrust is based upon not knowing the seller's ethics and being concerned about shill bidding. Delcampe will now have to face that resistance. You, eBay, Delcampe or other internet auction, may say we are watching for shill bidding but how closely is it being done and under what circumstances. That change may hurt the company. Fixed price sales are not so affected.
While it is reasonable, intuitive and well documented, that flex ending auction reach higher selling prices, it can help Delcampe sellers get more money and thus Delcampe can get more money when willing bidders are willing to pay reasonable prices. But there is the rub, an auction requires a seller and bidders. To have any type of auction you need a seller so any auction discussed has a seller by definition. One of the draws of fixed ending auctions is snipping or manually bidding at the end. Here you place a bid one thinks will work within what one is willing to pay. Well here comes the trust issue when it is suggested you should just place you maximum bid and see what happens. We have all either been burned or know stories of others burned by disclosing their max bid and finding the seller less than ethical. Funny how many times you win at the max or a bid just below. Always? No; but enough to be wary. Can you get shilled? Yes, just like those floor bidders (in person, phone or internet) bidding against the pillar or waste can in the back of the room. However, many folks like the fixed end auctions because they believe they can get an item for a steal and bidding low hoping others did not see the lot in question or are slow at pressing buttons. Giving competition more time is not liked by the sharks. The flexible ending auction cramps the plans of those folks who eventually move on to other locations to find bargains. The loss of those bidders from the general site does hurt sales; ask Yahoo.
Just because a model or product is better, does not mean it will succeed; 8-track v. Cassette, Beta v. VHS, long lasting incandescent bulbs v. cheaper shorter lasting bulbs all show human nature does not always select the best.
It is interesting that Dutch, aka reverse price auctions are not used in this market. Start high and keep regularly lowering the price until the first bid wins the item or the price decreases to the reserve and is withdrawn.
[There is a reason Game Theory is considered a part of economics and several recent Nobel Prizes in Economic have been awarded to game theory. While my comments above are general, if one wishes to really win, one must also factor in the algorithms used to choose which lots to display to which potential bidders. Such selection is not a level playing field for sellers nor buyers.]
I wish Delcampe the best, and for full disclosure, I have not sold nor purchased on that platform.
Quote: it is funny how rarely seen items sometimes just appear
This is so true It hasn't happened often though, but I'd expect that, given just how rare the postmarks that I am looking for are. A small needle in a vast field of haystacks might be a good analogy.
Just following up on Rod's last post, that is what I've done for one certain search (nothing to do with stamps), but when I log in to ebay I find I'm not subscribed, despite requesting emails be sent to me. This has happened on countless occasions. So now I check once a week on the off chance that what I'm after has been listed. Two years so far with no joy.
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Posted 11/17/2022 2:19 pm
It hasn't happened often though, but I'd expect that, given just how rare the postmarks that I am looking for are. A small needle in a vast field of haystacks might be a good analogy.
