Date   : Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:48:23 +0100
From   : anders.carlsson@... (Anders Carlsson)
Subject: New Retro Auction Website

Andrew Rowland wrote:

> What's a BIN?

Just like others have mentioned, it means Buy It Now. In case you are not
familiar with how e.g. eBay works, items can be listed in at least six
different ways:

1. Regular auction. You set a starting price and bidding takes place.

2. Regular auction with a reserve price. You set a starting price far
below what you really want for the item. The reserve price will make
bidders putting in unsuccessful bids to start with, and hopefully trigger
them to keep increasing their own bids until they reach your reserve.

3. Buy it now. This is a fixed price, and once a bidder hits it, the
auction ends immediately. You can have an auction with both a starting
bid and a BIN price, or only BIN (i.e. no bidding). In a regular auction
with an additional BIN, the BIN option disappears whenever someone put in
a starting bid.

You can combine all three of these so you have an auction with a low
starting bid, a higher reserve price and an even higher Buy It Now. It
means bidding can commence with the BIN option still available until
someone breaks the reserve price.

4. Best offer. This one works backwards. You can have an auction with a
very high starting bid or BIN. If you would consider taking offers below
this level, you add this option. You will then manually have to accept or
decline offers. When you have accepted an offer, the auction is of course
closed.

5. Dutch auction. This is quite uncommon, in which you have multiple but
identical auctions. People will fill in how many of the item they like to
buy and at which price. The ones who make the higher offer will be first
in line to get to buy the desired quantity. If there still are items left,
those who made lower offers may get into the action too. This is a kind of
sales form that origins from the Dutch flower auctions.

6. Classifieds. You sell items or perhaps more commonly services at a
fixed price. The difference from Buy It Now would be that classifieds has
no item count and the sale may take place outside of the auction site, as
far as I understand. On eBay you may see classifieds in the section for
baby-sitting services and similar.

Actually I may have forgotten any combination of ways to sell. As for the
custom auction sites, it may be open to debate which types of sales, swaps
and other trades make sense.

Best regards

-- 
Anders Carlsson