As eBay rolls-out 'soft-close' auctions, what will this mean for buyers?
After 30 years, eBay is poised to change the way buyers bid for some items - with big ramifications for those hoping to bag a bargain:
Which websites do you use to buy your Ian Fleming first editions?
If not you’re not yet purchasing from this website (tut-tut), I say take a look at what’s on offer.
Moving on though, if you’re like the majority of people I see, and your first port of call is eBay, then I have news for you.
At the start of this month, it was announced that eBay would be extending what it calls ‘soft close’ bidding, after having initially tested it in Australia with trading cards.
For those who don’t know what this is, soft-close auctions are rapidly gaining in popularity – and clearly, eBay doesn't want to be left out.
Here, instead of there being a strict, ‘hard close’ at a specific time (and with absolutely no exceptions), the auction is allowed to carry on if a bid is made within a time-frame set by the auction platform. The act of placing a bid within this time window adds an extra set period of time on, and this continues until everyone stops bidding and only one person is left.
The time periods being tested in Australia were for bids placed in the last 60 seconds of a timed auction. Here, if any bids were made during this final minute, an extra one minute would be added to the finishing time. This resets everything, and if further bids are made, an additional one minute time extension is added until no more bids are placed, and a ‘winner’ is declared (see below):
Although precise details about what categories of items this is going to expand to (or in which territories), reports indicate it will be coming to the UK soon.
Made no mistake, this is a big deal for eBay
Ever since it launched in the mid 1990s, the fixed time auction has been the only way eBay has operated. – notwithstanding an option it offers of being able to sell an item to the 'second-highest' bidder in the event of the ‘winner’ not paying.
Because it's always had fixed-finish-time auctions, a practice known as ‘sniping’ has been something bidders have long had to contend with.
This is where external software developers have made available tools that give a last-second bidding functionality, allowing bidders to ‘snipe’ and put an automatic bid at the very last millisecond.
In most of these cases, most normal bidders have no chance of replying before the counter reaches zero, and they lose out.
This practice has had widespread opposition, and it’s partly in response to this that eBay claims the soft-close option works better.
But here’s the thing – will this style of bidding simply make buying from eBay even more expensive? [Remember too that buyers have already had to pay a ‘protection fee’ for the last year or so].
If you read the eBay community groups, there is definitely a split in opinion (see later).
What’s clear however, is that there is a significant number who 'are' worried that this style of extended auctions will simply mean the winner always defaults to the last-man (or woman) standing – the person who
can keep on bidding and letting the auction run until everyone else has dropped out.
Those who deny this simply say eBay winners have always been the people who have been able to leave the highest maximum bid – where in an effort to combat snipers, a much larger ‘maximum bid’ is submitted, and hopefully any last second bidding won’t breach it.
But to this I would argue that most maximum bids are typically set sensibly by people – truly reflecting the most they’d be willing to pay – while extended bidding encourages prices to go much higher than this, well beyond what the average punter can stretch to.
This means items will arguably sell for ‘more’ than what their ordinary market value would be, and that once again, items remain the preserve of those with the deepest pockets.
Unfortunately, what’s not yet clear if the effect the Australian trial have increased final item prices.
That said, in official statements, eBay does confirm that it has led to “stronger bidding activity and, in many cases, higher final sale prices on high-demand listings.”
So, that's pretty much what I feared – an upward trajectory to prices.
Doing what others are already doing
It’s clear that eBay is wanting to emulate what many other physical auction houses have recently started doing.
Nowadays many traditional auction houses are also running timed auctions, in addition to their live, in-person auctions, and many now include this ‘time added on’ feature.
They've realised that their (typically) day-time auctions limit those who can be online during the working day, and by adding timed auctions, they can set finishes for the early evening, when people are back from work. With soft-closes in place, it means browsers can keep (in theory), bidding from the comfort of their sofas until everyone falls by the wayside.
eBay wants a return to auctions, not Buy-It-Now
What some might not realise, is that currently, only 12-15% of sales made through the eBay platform are, in fact, traditional auctions.
The vast majority of sellers has transitioned to more predictable ‘buy-it-now’, fixed prices.
But by introducing soft closes, eBay will be hoping to lure some people into returning to the traditional auction format.
For what I’m fairly certain will happen is that eBay sellers will definitely love this idea.
The potential for their items to continually get bids until the pips squeak is an attractive option – especially if they think that in doing so, they can achieve a final selling price that is higher than what they would have suggested as a Buy It Now price.
If you don’t believe me, here’s a selection of what’s being said about this, in eBay community groups:
“Psychologically it just makes buyers trigger happy and spend more than they should. Our fight, flight, freeze response used to be for predators, rival clans and environment , now it's for FOMO and poor investment decisions based on hype and excitement.”
“If they start doing soft close auctions on the things I want that will be a real game changer for me. I don't like bidding wars and get no satisfaction from them. Soft endings will just make it worse.”
“This opens up to shill bidding, fake bids to raise prices on buyers.”
“I don't see how this is good for bidders. This is a benefit for sellers only and that's the point.”
The impact on Bond books
There is a vast number of James Bond books for sale on eBay at any one time.
And as such, there’s no doubting that if soft closing moves to antiquarian and collectible books, some impact will be felt.
Part of the fun using eBay has always been finding an item, and seeing if you can get it, and getting in there in the last dying seconds.
Even better still is finding an item that ends at an obscure time, so that hopefully you’re the only bidder there.
By extending finish times ad-infinitum, however, that element of finality in the eBay bidding process will be removed, and it can only – in my opinion – hasten price inflation of very popular items.
As the eBay community member said, the fear of missing out, and the thrill of wanting to keep bidding going to not be the second place bidder ‘will’ inevitably take over.
In my opinion, James Bond first editions – especially high profile ones – will, inevitably get more expensive for buyers.
Of course, it would be remiss of me not to say that sites like ours, where items are for sale at a fixed price (and a competitive one at that), suffer none of these indiscretions. The price you see is the price you pay.
Perhaps an upside of this could be that as eBay items start to get expensive, buyers will instead migrate to online sellers like jamesbondfirsteditions.co.uk, where they can be assured that the price they see for a book is set in stone.
There’s no soft-pricing here!
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