sortie

Reserve price protects you from low bids and your ego!

For exampe:

I think my domain is worth $50k but will accept $40k.
So $40k is my reserve, but because nobody knows this they bid $20k and
it's the highest bid I got.

$20k is below the reserve so I don't lose the domain.
After a few hours of reflection I then realize that I'm an idiot and $20k is a good price. I can then click a button and sell the domain to the bidder for $20k.

Now Im happy because my ego didn't prevent a decent sell.

If I had set the starting bid at $40k then I would have ended with no sale.
If I tell someone the reserve is $40k they will decide that it's no point in bidding $20k so I lose the sell. My ego was too big to set the starting bid at $20k.

So it is basically stupid for someone to ask what the reserve is because if they become discouraged by a high reserve then they don't bid and they don't have a chance of winning the auction.
Further, since I now know this person knows what my reserve is and he bids,
I also know he's comming in this willing to pay up to the reserve.
If my reserve is not met then I'm going to contact him and try to push him up to the reserve because obviously he wants it bad enough to contact me and even after hearing a high price he still bids on it.


No one who ever asked me what the reserve was ever bid after I told them.

Once I told someone "the reserve is more than $1000 and less than $500,000".

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