Hypothetical question...

[localshop]

If you were selling an item on ebay, and there was a virtually identical item up for sale by a different seller at the same time, would you bid on the other item in order to try to raise the price on yours?

 

I'll explain why I am asking this question a little later on.

[rube11]

Actually so both auctions don't get "killed" it might be a better idea to wait till the other item is completed or almost complete. I had a similar situation happen in the past and neither I nor the other seller made out to well.

 

Steve

[Fan4Fan]

Yeah, I've delayed listing until there is a dearth of the item I'm selling.

 

Works sometimes, tho' others often list shortly after I do.

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

[thecomicsheet]

I did a quick bit of research to see which auction does better if 2 auctions for the same item show up close together with sellers with similar feedback. I found 10 instances in the last month. (My definition of close together was within 6 hours of each other). Of these, the first listed auction did better in 7 out of 10 cases, but not by a whole lot. I'll do a little more looking to see if prices were significantly higher or lower than similar auctions that occurred by themselves in previous or following weeks.

 

You might have noticed several recent auctions for Defenders #1 in 9.6 condition that were fairly close together (a few days apart in this case). Generally the first auction got the highest price with succeeding auctions getting lower and lower prices. After the first couple of auctions, the differences kept getting smaller and smaller, but it was still better to go first.