If I was to win the lottery and its a pretty big win say 10 million.
I think it would be interesting to sell $ 1,000,000 or perhaps £1,000,000, seen as im from the UK and feeling generous.
How does everyone think this auction would pan out ? I would hope that most people viewing the sale would think it was a scam and some kid or desperate person would win the auction for about £200.
As I haven’t won the lottery I wont be able to put this into practice (legally). So what are your opinions ?
If you do win the lottery, come to me first. I’ll give you 200 quid directly, and save you the eBay fees.
You should have a Dutch auction and sell the million in like ten lots.
The interesting question is, if you did this a couple of times, and it was known to be legit. (if nothing else, it’d attract the newspapers), what would the bidding reach?
Ebay’s PayPal already has a money market fund: http://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_upgrade-interest-marcom&outside=1-outside
I don’t get it. You’re going to sell $1,000,000? Are they supposed to feel like it’s a particularly special $1,000,000 because it came from lottery winnings?
Didn’t the KLF burn £1,000,000 for art’s sake?
Would auctioning £1,000,000 fall into the same category if you did it at a loss?
Personally, if you’re wanting to auction off £1,000,000 I think you should auction it for some non-monetary price. A true ‘I’d do it for a million’ game.
It’d be interesting to see what people would actually do for the money.
No, it’s an interesting experiment. Money isn’t always worth the same as other money. Money you have today is worth more than money you have tomorrow, money stuffed under a mattress loses value, one kind of money might be worth more than another kind of money.
So, in theory, this money should be bought for the value of the money, less transaction costs, plus a risk premium. The transaction costs should be easy to figure out, but how big would the risk premium be? And there are psychological factors involved in auctions as well.
After seeing countless gift cards sell for a dollar or two more than their value, I can see your auction going up to something like $1,000,012.37.
Yeah, can I take a moment to point out that the typical eBayer, or at least the typical winning eBayer, is an idiot. I cannot, for the life of me, fathom how I’ve managed to sell some of my used bicycle goods for 85% of retail.
I dont think you understand. I can only assume that most people would like a $1,000,000 especially if it does not cost this much to get their hands on.
My experiment is not about what value the $1,000,000 has thats obvious; its £1,000,000. The experiment would be more about how much someone is willing to risk on ebay. In my OP I say that I hope someone would win for £200 (or dollars), becuase this person thought it was worth risking £200 to dramatically change financial status.
Everyone has heard of ebay scams and fraud, for this reason I cant see why anyone would bid more than $200,000 unless they were prepared to go to court should the auction turn out to be a scam.
AH, desperate person would be me then. Oh hell, haven’t got £200. :smack:
Hmmm, maybe it’s time I took to buying lottery tickets. 
It would be funny to see what happened if anyone ever did such a thing.
Why would a million dollars from you on E-bay be worth a million pounds? I am totally confused by your logic.
I think that was a typo.
Chew, why don’t you try it with a lesser amount, just to see what happens? Can you afford a thousand pounds? Your might get a testosterone surge on the part of some bidder who can’t stand to lose an auction for anything for any reason and bids more than a thousand.
typo. =
It is a very interesting question; yes, why would anyone pay more than X to buy X amount of cash on eBay? But then again, why would anyone let someone else get it for less than X?
I have no idea what would happen with a million, but I suspect a smaller amount would end up at one bid increment short of the real value, or maybe the real value less carriage.
Give it a shot…try to sell $10.00 and see how much you get.
My guess it will go up to about $9.97, but if you are clever, charge them $5.00 for shipping and handling.
MWUHAHAHA! My thoughts exactly - If you’re really clever, list the item saying that shipping and handling will be calculated at the close of bidding.
This thread reminds me of the tale in The Prisoner’s Dilemma about how you can auction a dollar for lots more than a dollar, provided that you get the bidders to agree that the second-highest bidder must forfeit their bid and gain nothing. (It sounds like nobody would bid under those conditions, but people will–especially, as the book notes, if the amounts are small, they’ve had a couple drinks, and they aren’t calculating carefully.)
Once two people start bidding against each other, nobody wants to come in second, so the bids will break through a dollar and keep rising until people realize there is no end to it. So you end up getting more than a dollar from each of two people, in return for your dollar.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you can auction this way on e-bay.
I bet you can easily sell $100 for more than a $100 on E-bay. Go to a bank, withdraw $1000, ask the bank to give you $100 bills, take the most unique of the bills (the oldest, the one with the most interesting signature for the Secretary of the Treasury, who knows what), then put the $100 bill up on E-bay waxing eloquent about the properties of this particular $100 bill (the numerological properties of its serial number, a mysterious graffiti on the side that looks like it say “C U Later - Leo” - could that be Leonardo DiCaprio?).
Say the shipping is $5.00 (US mail with return receipt), set the minimum bid to $100, and see what happens.